... to make sure all accesses are properly validated.

Merely renaming the var to __i_state still lets the compiler make the
following suggestion:
error: 'struct inode' has no member named 'i_state'; did you mean '__i_state'?

Unfortunately some people will add the __'s and call it a day.

In order to make it harder to mess up in this way, hide it behind a
struct. The resulting error message should be convincing in terms of
checking what to do:
error: invalid operands to binary & (have 'struct inode_state_flags' and 'int')

Of course people determined to do a plain access can still do it, but
nothing can be done for that case.

Signed-off-by: Mateusz Guzik <mjguzik@gmail.com>
---
 include/linux/fs.h | 17 ++++++++++++-----
 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/include/linux/fs.h b/include/linux/fs.h
index 73f3ce5add6b..caf438d56f88 100644
--- a/include/linux/fs.h
+++ b/include/linux/fs.h
@@ -782,6 +782,13 @@ enum inode_state_flags_enum {
 #define I_DIRTY (I_DIRTY_INODE | I_DIRTY_PAGES)
 #define I_DIRTY_ALL (I_DIRTY | I_DIRTY_TIME)
 
+/*
+ * Use inode_state_read() & friends to access.
+ */
+struct inode_state_flags {
+	enum inode_state_flags_enum __state;
+};
+
 /*
  * Keep mostly read-only and often accessed (especially for
  * the RCU path lookup and 'stat' data) fields at the beginning
@@ -840,7 +847,7 @@ struct inode {
 #endif
 
 	/* Misc */
-	enum inode_state_flags_enum i_state;
+	struct inode_state_flags i_state;
 	/* 32-bit hole */
 	struct rw_semaphore	i_rwsem;
 
@@ -906,26 +913,26 @@ struct inode {
  */
 static inline enum inode_state_flags_enum inode_state_read(struct inode *inode)
 {
-	return READ_ONCE(inode->i_state);
+	return READ_ONCE(inode->i_state.__state);
 }
 
 static inline void inode_state_set(struct inode *inode,
 				   enum inode_state_flags_enum flags)
 {
-	WRITE_ONCE(inode->i_state, inode->i_state | flags);
+	WRITE_ONCE(inode->i_state.__state, inode->i_state.__state | flags);
 }
 
 static inline void inode_state_clear(struct inode *inode,
 				     enum inode_state_flags_enum flags)
 {
-	WRITE_ONCE(inode->i_state, inode->i_state & ~flags);
+	WRITE_ONCE(inode->i_state.__state, inode->i_state.__state & ~flags);
 
 }
 
 static inline void inode_state_assign(struct inode *inode,
 				      enum inode_state_flags_enum flags)
 {
-	WRITE_ONCE(inode->i_state, flags);
+	WRITE_ONCE(inode->i_state.__state, flags);
 }
 
 static inline void inode_set_cached_link(struct inode *inode, char *link, int linklen)
-- 
2.43.0