linux-kernel - [PATCH] Fix dirty page accounting leak with ext3 data=journal

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Date:	Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:42:13 +0100
From:	Björn Steinbrink <B.Steinbrink@....de>
To:	Krzysztof Oledzki <olel@....pl>
Cc:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au>,
	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
	Thomas Osterried <osterried@...se.de>, protasnb@...il.com,
	bugme-daemon@...zilla.kernel.org, sct@...hat.com,
	adilget@...sterfs.com, linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org
Subject: [PATCH] Fix dirty page accounting leak with ext3 data=journal

In 46d2277c796f9f4937bfa668c40b2e3f43e93dd0, try_to_free_buffers was
changed to bail out if the page was dirty. That caused
truncate_complete_page to leak massive amounts of memory, because the
dirty bit was only cleared after the call to try_to_free_buffers. So the
call to cancel_dirty_page was moved up to have the dirty bit cleared
early in 3e67c0987d7567ad666641164a153dca9a43b11d.

The problem with that fix is, that the page can be redirtied after
cancel_dirty_page was called, eg. like this:

truncate_complete_page()
  cancel_dirty_page() // PG_dirty cleared, decr. dirty pages
  do_invalidatepage()
    ext3_invalidatepage()
      journal_invalidatepage()
        journal_unmap_buffer()
          __dispose_buffer()
            __journal_unfile_buffer()
              __journal_temp_unlink_buffer()
                mark_buffer_dirty(); // PG_dirty set, incr. dirty pages

And then we end up with dirty pages being wrongly accounted.

In ecdfc9787fe527491baefc22dce8b2dbd5b2908d the changes to
try_to_free_buffers were reverted, so the original reason for the
massive memory leak is gone, so we can also revert the move of
the call to cancel_dirty_page from truncate_complete_page and get the
accounting right again.

Signed-off-by: Björn Steinbrink <B.Steinbrink@....de>
Tested-by: Krzysztof Piotr Oledzki <ole@....pl>

---
I'm not sure if it matters, but opposed to the final check in
__remove_from_page_cache, this one also cares about the task io
accounting, so maybe we want to use this instead, although it's not
quite the clean fix either.

diff --git a/mm/truncate.c b/mm/truncate.c
index cadc156..2974903 100644
--- a/mm/truncate.c
+++ b/mm/truncate.c
@@ -98,11 +98,11 @@ truncate_complete_page(struct address_space *mapping, struct page *page)
 	if (page->mapping != mapping)
 		return;
 
-	cancel_dirty_page(page, PAGE_CACHE_SIZE);
-
 	if (PagePrivate(page))
 		do_invalidatepage(page, 0);
 
+	cancel_dirty_page(page, PAGE_CACHE_SIZE);
+
 	remove_from_page_cache(page);
 	ClearPageUptodate(page);
 	ClearPageMappedToDisk(page);
--
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