From: Andreas Gruenbacher <agruen@suse.de>

This patch removes the dependency on i_sem in the getxattr and
listxattr iops of ext2 and ext3. In addition, the global ext[23]_xattr
semaphores go away. Instead of i_sem and the global semaphore, mutual
exclusion is now ensured by per-inode xattr semaphores, and by locking
the buffers before modifying them. The detailed locking strategy is
described in comments in fs/ext[23]/xattr.c.

Due to this change it is no longer necessary to take i_sem in
ext[23]_permission() for retrieving acls, so the
ext[23]_permission_locked() functions go away.

Additionally, the patch fixes a race condition in ext[23]_permission:
Accessing inode->i_acl was protected by the BKL in 2.4; in 2.5 there no
longer is such protection. Instead, inode->i_acl (and inode->i_default_acl)
are now accessed under inode->i_lock. (This could be replaced by RCU in
the future.)

In the ext3 extended attribute code, an new uglines results from locking
at the buffer head level: The buffer lock must be held between testing
if an xattr block can be modified and the actual modification to prevent
races from happening. Before a block can be modified,
ext3_journal_get_write_access() must be called. But this requies an unlocked
buffer, so I call ext3_journal_get_write_access() before locking the
buffer. If it turns out that the buffer cannot be modified,
journal_release_buffer() is called. Calling ext3_journal_get_write_access
after the test but while the buffer is still locked would be much better.