From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S264305AbTLPDAC (ORCPT ); Mon, 15 Dec 2003 22:00:02 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S264310AbTLPDAC (ORCPT ); Mon, 15 Dec 2003 22:00:02 -0500 Received: from [24.35.117.106] ([24.35.117.106]:50819 "EHLO localhost.localdomain") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S264305AbTLPC77 (ORCPT ); Mon, 15 Dec 2003 21:59:59 -0500 Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 21:59:58 -0500 (EST) From: Thomas Molina X-X-Sender: tmolina@localhost.localdomain To: Kernel Mailing List Subject: Is Rational rational? Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Does the enclosed patch to fs/namei.c make sense? IBM/Rational Software is advocating use of the following patch to deal with a situation where users of Clearcase are having difficulties deleting sockets, devices, and named pipes when using the mvfs file system. The problem reportedly arises from populating a shadow filesystem with the contents of the system root and the handling of sockets, devices and named pipes. The full text of the problem report response can be accessed by going to: http://www.ibm.com/software/rational/support/ and entering 1154790 in the search box. --- /usr/src/linux/fs/namei.c Tue Oct 30 10:03:52 2001 +++ /usr/src/linux-patched/namei.c Fri Jun 20 05:12:16 2003 @@ -907,7 +907,7 @@ static inline int may_delete(struct inode *dir,struct dentry *victim, int isdir) { int error; - if (!victim->d_inode || victim->d_parent->d_inode != dir) + if (!victim->d_inode) return -ENOENT; error = permission(dir,MAY_WRITE | MAY_EXEC); if (error) I'm not really competent to evaluate this proposesd patch, but it certainly makes me nervous. Their comment on this also bothers me: "Rational Software believes that the check that is removed by this patch is one that should never fail for any properly operating filesystem. "