sysfs: rename sysfs_assoc_lock and explain what it's about

sysfs_assoc_lock is an odd piece of locking.  In general, whoever owns
a kobject is responsible for synchronizing sysfs operations and sysfs
proper assumes that, for example, removal won't race with any other
operation; however, this doesn't work for symlinking because an entity
performing symlink doesn't usually own the target kobject and thus has
no control over its removal.

sysfs_assoc_lock synchronizes symlink operations against kobj->sd
disassociation so that symlink code doesn't end up dereferencing
already freed sysfs_dirent by racing with removal of the target
kobject.

This is quite obscure and the generic name of the lock and lack of
comments make it difficult to understand its role.  Let's rename it to
sysfs_symlink_target_lock and add comments explaining what's going on.

Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Reported-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>

1 files changed, 14 insertions, 6 deletions

diff --git a/fs/sysfs/symlink.c b/fs/sysfs/symlink.c
index 22ea2f5..1a23681 100644
--- a/fs/sysfs/symlink.c
+++ b/fs/sysfs/symlink.c
@@ -32,13 +32,15 @@ static int sysfs_do_create_link_sd(struct sysfs_dirent *parent_sd,
 
 	BUG_ON(!name || !parent_sd);
 
-	/* target->sd can go away beneath us but is protected with
-	 * sysfs_assoc_lock.  Fetch target_sd from it.
+	/*
+	 * We don't own @target and it may be removed at any time.
+	 * Synchronize using sysfs_symlink_target_lock.  See
+	 * sysfs_remove_dir() for details.
 	 */
-	spin_lock(&sysfs_assoc_lock);
+	spin_lock(&sysfs_symlink_target_lock);
 	if (target->sd)
 		target_sd = sysfs_get(target->sd);
-	spin_unlock(&sysfs_assoc_lock);
+	spin_unlock(&sysfs_symlink_target_lock);
 
 	error = -ENOENT;
 	if (!target_sd)
@@ -140,10 +142,16 @@ void sysfs_delete_link(struct kobject *kobj, struct kobject *targ,
 			const char *name)
 {
 	const void *ns = NULL;
-	spin_lock(&sysfs_assoc_lock);
+
+	/*
+	 * We don't own @target and it may be removed at any time.
+	 * Synchronize using sysfs_symlink_target_lock.  See
+	 * sysfs_remove_dir() for details.
+	 */
+	spin_lock(&sysfs_symlink_target_lock);
 	if (targ->sd)
 		ns = targ->sd->s_ns;
-	spin_unlock(&sysfs_assoc_lock);
+	spin_unlock(&sysfs_symlink_target_lock);
 	sysfs_hash_and_remove(kobj->sd, name, ns);
 }