ch an acknowledgement is received (in process_ack()), the message is removed from its list (in ceph_msg_remove()), at which point it is no longer associated with the connection. So basically, any time a message is on one of a connection's lists, it is associated with that connection. Reference counting outgoing messages can thus be done at the points a message is added to the out_queue (in ceph_con_send()) and the point it is removed from either its two lists (in ceph_msg_remove())--at which point its connection pointer becomes null. Incoming Messages When an incoming message on a connection is getting read (in read_partial_message()) and there is no message in con->in_msg, a new one is allocated using ceph_con_in_msg_alloc(). At that point the message is associated with the connection. Once that message has been completely and successfully read, it is passed to upper layer code using the connection's con->ops->dispatch method. At that point the association between the message and the connection no longer exists. Reference counting of connections for incoming messages can be done by taking a reference to the connection when the message gets allocated, and releasing that reference when it gets handed off using the dispatch method. We should never fail to get a connection reference for a message--the since the caller should already hold one. Signed-off-by: Alex Elder Reviewed-by: Sage Weil ´"èQ™8x