linux-kernel - Re: 2.6.19 file content corruption on ext3

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Message-ID: <458641C2.5010807@yahoo.com.au>
Date:	Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:22:42 +1100
From:	Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au>
To:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...l.org>
CC:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...l.org>, andrei.popa@...eo.ro,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>,
	Hugh Dickins <hugh@...itas.com>,
	Florian Weimer <fw@...eb.enyo.de>,
	Marc Haber <mh+linux-kernel@...schlus.de>,
	Martin Michlmayr <tbm@...ius.com>
Subject: Re: 2.6.19 file content corruption on ext3

Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 15:51:52 +1100
> Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au> wrote:
> 
> 
>>I think the problem Andrew identified is real.
> 
> 
> I don't.  In fact I don't think I described any problem (well, I tried to,
> but then I contradicted myself).

By saying that there shouldn't be any dirty ptes if there are no
dirty buffers? But in that case the _page_ shouldn't be dirty either,
so that clear_page_dirty would be redundant. But presumably it isn't.

> Six hours here of fsx-linux plus high memory pressure on SMP on 1k
> blocksize ext3, mainline.  Zero failures.  It's unlikely that this testing
> would pass, yet people running normal workloads are able to easily trigger
> failures.  I suspect we're looking in the wrong place.

Yes I could believe it the corruption is caused by something else
completely.

>>The issue is the disconnect between the pte dirtiness and a filesystem
>>bringing buffers clean.
> 
> 
> Really?  The dirtying direction goes pte_dirty->PG_dirty->BH_Dirty and the
> cleaning direction goes !BH_Dirty->!PG_dirty->!pte_dirty.  That's pretty
> simple, setting aside races.
> 
> In the try_to_free_buffers case there's a large time inverval between
> !BH_Dirty and !PG_dirty, but that shouldn't affect anything.

After try_to_free_buffers detaches the buffers from the page, a
pagefault can come in, and mark the pte writeable, then set_page_dirty
(which finds no buffers, so only sets PG_dirty).

The page can now get dirtied through this mapping.

try_to_free_buffers then goes on to clean the page and ptes.

I really thought you were the one who identified this race, and I didn't
see where you showed it is safe.

It may be very unlikely with small SMPs, but less so with preempt. All
we have to do is preempt at spin_unlock in try_to_free_buffers AFAIKS.
Were you testing with preempt?

-- 
SUSE Labs, Novell Inc.
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