On Dec 03, 2008  19:54 +0000, Duane Griffin wrote:

This patch series prevents the inheritance and setting of flags that are
inappropriate for specific inode types.

Flags which should be inherited are listed explicitly so as to prevent
future flags being overlooked and inherited by accident.

It introduces a function to mask flags based on the inode type and uses
it in inode creation and the SETFLAGS ioctl to help prevent future
inconsistency.

Patches 1-3 fix the TOPDIR flag inheritance bug reported at
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9866.

Patches 4-6 fix a related problem with non-regular file/dir inodes
inheriting inappropriate flags, discovered while testing. For example,
on an unpatched system, the following sequence will create an
un(re)movable device node:

I worked with Duane during the development of these patches and agree
that they implement the proper solution to a problem that has repeated
a number of times as new flags are added.

Acked-by: Andreas Dilger <redacted>

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
Sr. Staff Engineer, Lustre Group
Sun Microsystems of Canada, Inc.