[PATCH] overlayfs.rst: remove mention of workdir needing to be empty

Jesse Van Gavere via B4 Relay <[email protected]> Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:52:23 +0200
Newsgroups org.kernel.vger.linux-unionfs,org.kernel.feeds.b4-sent,org.kernel.vger.linux-doc,org.kernel.vger.linux-kernel
Message-ID <[email protected]>
From: Jesse Van Gavere <[email protected]>

This requirement has not been true since v4.8 when automatic cleanup was
added in commit eea2fb4851e9 ("ovl: proper cleanup of workdir")

Signed-off-by: Jesse Van Gavere <[email protected]>
---
 Documentation/filesystems/overlayfs.rst | 4 ++--
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/overlayfs.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/overlayfs.rst
index eb846518e6ac..7e28bfb4a99e 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/overlayfs.rst
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/overlayfs.rst
@@ -123,8 +123,8 @@ At mount time, the two directories given as mount options "lowerdir" and
   mount -t overlay overlay -olowerdir=/lower,upperdir=/upper,\
   workdir=/work /merged
 
-The "workdir" needs to be an empty directory on the same filesystem
-as upperdir.
+The "workdir" will be cleaned up at mount time and needs to be on the same
+filesystem as upperdir.
 
 Then whenever a lookup is requested in such a merged directory, the
 lookup is performed in each actual directory and the combined result

---
base-commit: 58717b2a1365d06c8c64b72aa948541b53fe31eb
change-id: 20260715-overlayfs-rst-update-750d58792f79

Best regards,
--  
Jesse Van Gavere <[email protected]>