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/block/ps3vram.c b/drivers/block/ps3vram.c
index 393ed6760d78..8eddef373a91 100644
--- a/drivers/block/ps3vram.c
+++ b/drivers/block/ps3vram.c
@@ -551,8 +551,6 @@ static void __devinit ps3vram_proc_init(struct ps3_system_bus_device *dev)
                 dev_warn(&dev->core, "failed to create /proc entry\n");
                 return;
         }
-
-        pde->owner = THIS_MODULE;
         pde->data = priv;
 }