Hi All, I get this panic running RedHat 2.4.3-6: Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 00000004 c014b13d Oops: 0002 CPU: 0 EIP: 0010:[<c014b13d>] Using defaults from ksymoops -t elf32-i386 -a i386 EFLAGS: 00010246 eax: 00000000 ebx: c4a6dcc0 ecx: c4a6dce8 edx: 00000000 esi: c0256ed8 edi: c59197a0 ebp: c4ba79e8 esp: c4ba78a0 ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018 Process nfsd (pid: 3230, stackpage=c4ba7000) Stack: c1239148 c4a6d9e8 c4a6dcc0 c4a6d9c0 c4a6dcc0 c4a6d9c0 c68af335 c4a6dcc0 c4a6d9c0 00000000 c4ba79e8 c4a6d9c0 c59197a0 c68af59a c4a6d9c0 c59197a0 c4ba79e8 00000000 00706d74 c5e07d80 c1e9ec00 c014d972 c1e9ec00 00007458 Call Trace: [<c68af335>] [<c68af59a>] [<c014d972>] [<c016bf17>] [<c015fa28>] [<c02275a0>] [<c015fa51>] [<c014d972>] [<c015fbfd>] [<c014b0b4>] [<c68af887> ] [...] >>EIP; c014b13d <dput+ad/180> <===== Trace; c68af335 <[nfsd]d_splice+e5/160> Trace; c68af59a <[nfsd]splice+ea/140> Trace; c014d972 <iget4+52/100> Trace; c016bf17 <ll_rw_block+167/1b0> [...] Code; c014b13d <dput+ad/180> 00000000 <_EIP>: Code; c014b13d <dput+ad/180> <===== 0: 89 50 04 mov %edx,0x4(%eax) <===== Code; c014b140 <dput+b0/180> 3: 89 02 mov %eax,(%edx) Code; c014b142 <dput+b2/180> 5: c7 43 28 00 00 00 00 movl $0x0,0x28(%ebx) Code; c014b149 <dput+b9/180> c: c7 41 04 00 00 00 00 movl $0x0,0x4(%ecx) Code; c014b150 <dput+c0/180> 13: 8b 00 mov (%eax),%eax This is in dcache.c here: kill_it: { struct dentry *parent; list_del(&dentry->d_child); ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ /* drops the lock, at that point nobody can reach this dentry */ dentry_iput(dentry); The problem is pretty specific to 2.4.3-6 because it has code in list_del() to null out the prev and next pointers (I don't know where they picked it up, but its gone in 2.4.5). However, it exposes a bug in NFS, namely that d_splice() also calls list_del() on tdentry->d_child. This shouldn't be done because it makes the d_child list invalid, so any subsequent call to list_del on d_child could panic. I think the correct fix (attached below) is to change the NFS list_del to list_del_init. James Bottomley Steeleye technology.
Index: linux/2.4/fs/nfsd/nfsfh.c diff -u linux/2.4/fs/nfsd/nfsfh.c:1.1.1.8.4.1 linux/2.4/fs/nfsd/nfsfh.c:1.1.1.8.4.2 --- linux/2.4/fs/nfsd/nfsfh.c:1.1.1.8.4.1 Wed May 9 11:08:54 2001 +++ linux/2.4/fs/nfsd/nfsfh.c Fri Jun 8 16:18:33 2001 @@ -238,7 +238,7 @@ * make it an IS_ROOT instead */ spin_lock(&dcache_lock); - list_del(&tdentry->d_child); + list_del_init(&tdentry->d_child); tdentry->d_parent = tdentry; spin_unlock(&dcache_lock); d_rehash(target);