We need put a lock around places checking the refount as well to avoid racing issue. Another place need this kind of protection is in ext3_xattr_block_set(), where it will modify the xattr block content in- the-fly if the refcount is 1 (means it's the only inode reference it). This will also fix another issue: the xattr block may not get freed at all if no lock is to protect the refcount check at the release time. It is possible that the last two inodes could release the shared xattr block at the same time. But both of them think they are not the last one so only decreased the h_refcount without freeing xattr block at all. We need to call lock_buffer() after ext3_journal_get_write_access() to avoid deadlock (because the later will call lock_buffer()/unlock_buffer () as well). Signed-off-by: Mingming Cao Cc: Andreas Gruenbacher Cc: Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds Ç0êË›4x