In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: pstore: inode: Only d_invalidate() is needed Unloading a modular pstore backend with records in pstorefs would trigger the dput() double-drop warning: WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 2569 at fs/dcache.c:762 dput.part.0+0x3f3/0x410 Using the combo of d_drop()/dput() (as mentioned in Documentation/filesystems/vfs.rst) isn't the right approach here, and leads to the reference counting problem seen above. Use d_invalidate() and update the code to not bother checking for error codes that can never happen. ***