Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753194AbWLRFna (ORCPT ); Mon, 18 Dec 2006 00:43:30 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753196AbWLRFna (ORCPT ); Mon, 18 Dec 2006 00:43:30 -0500 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.25]:33939 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753194AbWLRFna (ORCPT ); Mon, 18 Dec 2006 00:43:30 -0500 Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2006 21:43:08 -0800 From: Andrew Morton To: Nick Piggin Cc: Linus Torvalds , andrei.popa@i-neo.ro, Linux Kernel Mailing List , Peter Zijlstra , Hugh Dickins , Florian Weimer , Marc Haber , Martin Michlmayr Subject: Re: 2.6.19 file content corruption on ext3 Message-Id: <20061217214308.62b9021a.akpm@osdl.org> In-Reply-To: <45861E68.3060403@yahoo.com.au> References: <1166314399.7018.6.camel@localhost> <20061217040620.91dac272.akpm@osdl.org> <1166362772.8593.2.camel@localhost> <20061217154026.219b294f.akpm@osdl.org> <45861E68.3060403@yahoo.com.au> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 2.2.7 (GTK+ 2.8.17; x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1233 Lines: 30 On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 15:51:52 +1100 Nick Piggin 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). 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. > 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. I don't think we even have a theory as to what's gone wrong yet. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/