In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
sysv: don't call sb_bread() with pointers_lock held
syzbot is reporting sleep in atomic context in SysV filesystem [1], for
sb_bread() is called with rw_spinlock held.
A "write_lock(&pointers_lock) => read_lock(&pointers_lock) deadlock" bug
and a "sb_bread() with write_lock(&pointers_lock)" bug were introduced by
"Replace BKL for chain locking with sysvfs-private rwlock" in Linux 2.5.12.
Then, "[PATCH] err1-40: sysvfs locking fix" in Linux 2.6.8 fixed the
former bug by moving pointers_lock lock to the callers, but instead
introduced a "sb_bread() with read_lock(&pointers_lock)" bug (which made
this problem easier to hit).
Al Viro suggested that why not to do like get_branch()/get_block()/
find_shared() in Minix filesystem does. And doing like that is almost a
revert of "[PATCH] err1-40: sysvfs locking fix" except that get_branch()
from with find_shared() is called without write_lock(&pointers_lock).