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

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Message-ID: <4587C506.5000900@yahoo.com.au>
Date:	Tue, 19 Dec 2006 21:55:02 +1100
From:	Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au>
To:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...l.org>
CC:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...l.org>,
	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>, andrei.popa@...eo.ro,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	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 Tue, 19 Dec 2006 20:56:50 +1100
> Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au> wrote:

>>I think it could be very likely that indeed the bug is a latent one in
>>a clear_page_dirty caller, rather than dirty-tracking itself.
> 
> 
> The only callers are try_to_free_buffers(), truncate and a few scruffy
> possibly-wrong-for-fsync filesytems which aren't being used here.

Well truncate/invalidate will not operate on mapped pages (barring the
very-unlikely truncate/invalidate vs fault races). We can ignore those
filesystems as they don't include ext3. Which brings us back to
try_to_free_buffers().

Maybe it is something else entirely, but did try_to_free_buffers ever
get completely cleared? Or was some of Andrei's corruption possibly
leftover on-disk corruption from a previous kernel?

-- 
SUSE Labs, Novell Inc.
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