linux-ext4 - Re: [PATCH 05/22] ext4: Fix ext4_should_journal

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Date:   Sun, 20 Oct 2019 21:38:42 -0400
From:   "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>
To:     Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>
Cc:     linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 05/22] ext4: Fix ext4_should_journal_data() for EA inodes

On Fri, Oct 04, 2019 at 12:05:51AM +0200, Jan Kara wrote:
> Similarly to directories, EA inodes do only journalled modifications to
> their data. Change ext4_should_journal_data() to return true for them so
> that we don't have to special-case them during truncate.

We are already special-casing EA inodes in ext4_clear_blocks() in
fs/ext4/indirect.c, and get_default_free_blocks_flags() in
fs/ext4/extents.c, and like S_ISDIR, we want to treat EA inode blocks
as metadata.   So I'm not sure I see the value of this change?

As an aside, I was looking at fs/ext4/mballoc.c to see what the
difference is for treating a block as a metadata block versus a
journaled data block, and what I found made my hair rise on end:

	/*
	 * We need to make sure we don't reuse the freed block until after the
	 * transaction is committed. We make an exception if the inode is to be
	 * written in writeback mode since writeback mode has weak data
	 * consistency guarantees.
	 */

So in data=writeback, if a file is deleted, its blocks are available
for immediate reallocation, and if we are under heavy memory pressure,
the deleted file's blocks could get overwritten --- even in the case
where we crash and the transaction never committed.

While it's true that date=writeback mode has weaker guarantees, my
understanding is that it only applied to the exposure stale data, and
not to a long-standing file's blocks getting corrupted if it is almost
deleted, but not quite before a crash.

Granted, the situation where this would happen is quite wrare, but it
seems quite wrong....

						- Ted