[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]
Message-ID: <m1veed82mz.fsf@ebiederm.dsl.xmission.com>
Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 08:05:24 -0600
From: ebiederm@...ssion.com (Eric W. Biederman)
To: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/3] Preserve the dirty bit in init_page_buffers
Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au> writes:
> Nick Piggin wrote:
>> Eric W. Biederman wrote:
>
>>> When we initialize the ramdisk by writing to /dev/ram0 usually in
>>> init/do_mounts_rd.c we don't allocate buffer heads but we do set
>>> the dirty bit, and the page is in the page cache. So when we
>>> later call getblk it reuses the same page and then calls
>>> init_page_buffers.
>>
>>
>> Hmm, so this would be a problem for block_dev.c as well, then?
>> Because it would be possible to have a dirty block dev page
>> have its buffers reclaimed and then reinitialised via
>> init_page_buffers, AFAIKS.
>
> Oh, no, try_to_free_buffers won't drop dirty buffers. However we
> could still set_page_dirty of a block device page without buffers
> via an mmap.
After the page is made dirty via mmap we have:
sys_write -> ... -> block_prepare_write -> ... -> create_empty_buffers.
I suspect that is a pretty rare case but it does indeed seem to exist
as a problem.
Eric
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Powered by blists - more mailing lists