From: Marcin Slusarz generic_readlink calls ERR_PTR for negative and positive values (vfs_readlink returns length of "link"), but it should not (not an errno) and does not need to. Signed-off-by: Marcin Slusarz Cc: Al Viro Cc: Christoph Hellwig Acked-by: Miklos Szeredi Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton --- fs/namei.c | 15 ++++++++------- 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-) diff -puN fs/namei.c~vfs-fix-err_ptr-abuse-in-generic_readlink fs/namei.c --- a/fs/namei.c~vfs-fix-err_ptr-abuse-in-generic_readlink +++ a/fs/namei.c @@ -2857,16 +2857,17 @@ int generic_readlink(struct dentry *dent { struct nameidata nd; void *cookie; + int res; nd.depth = 0; cookie = dentry->d_inode->i_op->follow_link(dentry, &nd); - if (!IS_ERR(cookie)) { - int res = vfs_readlink(dentry, buffer, buflen, nd_get_link(&nd)); - if (dentry->d_inode->i_op->put_link) - dentry->d_inode->i_op->put_link(dentry, &nd, cookie); - cookie = ERR_PTR(res); - } - return PTR_ERR(cookie); + if (IS_ERR(cookie)) + return PTR_ERR(cookie); + + res = vfs_readlink(dentry, buffer, buflen, nd_get_link(&nd)); + if (dentry->d_inode->i_op->put_link) + dentry->d_inode->i_op->put_link(dentry, &nd, cookie); + return res; } int vfs_follow_link(struct nameidata *nd, const char *link) _