proc 2/2: remove struct proc_dir_entry::owner

Setting ->owner as done currently (pde->owner = THIS_MODULE) is racy
as correctly noted at bug #12454. Someone can lookup entry with NULL
->owner, thus not pinning enything, and release it later resulting
in module refcount underflow.

We can keep ->owner and supply it at registration time like ->proc_fops
and ->data.

But this leaves ->owner as easy-manipulative field (just one C assignment)
and somebody will forget to unpin previous/pin current module when
switching ->owner. ->proc_fops is declared as "const" which should give
some thoughts.

->read_proc/->write_proc were just fixed to not require ->owner for
protection.

rmmod'ed directories will be empty and return "." and ".." -- no harm.
And directories with tricky enough readdir and lookup shouldn't be modular.
We definitely don't want such modular code.

Removing ->owner will also make PDE smaller.

So, let's nuke it.

Kudos to Jeff Layton for reminding about this, let's say, oversight.

http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12454

Signed-off-by: Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com>

1 files changed, 0 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/drivers/message/i2o/i2o_proc.c b/drivers/message/i2o/i2o_proc.c
index 9a36b5a7de57..7045c45da9b1 100644
--- a/drivers/message/i2o/i2o_proc.c
+++ b/drivers/message/i2o/i2o_proc.c
@@ -2037,8 +2037,6 @@ static int __init i2o_proc_fs_create(void)
 	if (!i2o_proc_dir_root)
 		return -1;
 
-	i2o_proc_dir_root->owner = THIS_MODULE;
-
 	list_for_each_entry(c, &i2o_controllers, list)
 	    i2o_proc_iop_add(i2o_proc_dir_root, c);