it's safe to use to dispose of new superblock on ->get_sb() failure exits - nobody will see the sucker until it's all over. Equivalent using up_write/deactivate_super is safe for that purpose if superblock is either safe to use or has NULL ->s_root when we unlock. Normally filesystems take the required precautions, but a) we do have bugs in that area in some of them. b) up_write/deactivate_super sequence is extremely common, so the helper makes sense anyway. Signed-off-by: Al Viro ئا8.‍%x