Hi Linus, In an ideal work (free of bugs) notify_change() can never receive a negative dentry because it would subsequently oops in inode_change_ok() when dereferencing inode->i_uid. Therefore: a) instead of oopsing in inode_change_ok() and having to trace the reason back to notify_change() it is better to trap it as early as possible inside notify_change() as a BUG() b) when compiling for "ideal world" with empty BUG() the compiler would produce a faster code. Thus the patch, tested under 2.4.0-test10-pre3. Regards, Tigran --- linux/fs/attr.c Fri Sep 22 22:21:18 2000 +++ work/fs/attr.c Sun Oct 15 21:49:37 2000 @@ -110,6 +110,9 @@ time_t now = CURRENT_TIME; unsigned int ia_valid = attr->ia_valid; + if (!inode) + BUG(); + attr->ia_ctime = now; if (!(ia_valid & ATTR_ATIME_SET)) attr->ia_atime = now; @@ -117,7 +120,7 @@ attr->ia_mtime = now; lock_kernel(); - if (inode && inode->i_op && inode->i_op->setattr) + if (inode->i_op && inode->i_op->setattr) error = inode->i_op->setattr(dentry, attr); else { error = inode_change_ok(inode, attr); - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/