ext4: guard against EA inode refcount underflow in xattr update
commit 57295e83 upstream. syzkaller found a path where ext4_xattr_inode_update_ref() reads an EA inode refcount that is already <= 0 and then applies ref_change (often -1). That lets the refcount underflow and we proceed with a bogus value, triggering errors like: EXT4-fs error: EA inode <n> ref underflow: ref_count=-1 ref_change=-1 EXT4-fs warning: ea_inode dec ref err=-117 Make the invariant explicit: if the current refcount is non-positive, treat this as on-disk corruption, emit ext4_error_inode(), and fail the operation with -EFSCORRUPTED instead of updating the refcount. Delete the WARN_ONCE() as negative refcounts are now impossible; keep error reporting in ext4_error_inode(). This prevents the underflow and the follow-on orphan/cleanup churn. Reported-by:<syzbot+0be4f339a8218d2a5bb1@syzkaller.appspotmail.com> Fixes: https://syzbot.org/bug?extid=0be4f339a8218d2a5bb1 Cc: stable@kernel.org Co-developed-by:
Albin Babu Varghese <albinbabuvarghese20@gmail.com> Signed-off-by:
Albin Babu Varghese <albinbabuvarghese20@gmail.com> Signed-off-by:
Ahmet Eray Karadag <eraykrdg1@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20250920021342.45575-1-eraykrdg1@gmail.com> Signed-off-by:
Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> Signed-off-by:
Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
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