Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753595AbWLRJS1 (ORCPT ); Mon, 18 Dec 2006 04:18:27 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753596AbWLRJS1 (ORCPT ); Mon, 18 Dec 2006 04:18:27 -0500 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.25]:47371 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753594AbWLRJS0 (ORCPT ); Mon, 18 Dec 2006 04:18:26 -0500 Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 01:18:01 -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: <20061218011801.04ec66be.akpm@osdl.org> In-Reply-To: <458641C2.5010807@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> <20061217214308.62b9021a.akpm@osdl.org> <458641C2.5010807@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: 2411 Lines: 66 On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:22:42 +1100 Nick Piggin wrote: > Andrew Morton wrote: > > 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). > > 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. I don't follow that. The linkage between pte-dirtiness and buffer_heads is a bit hard to follow without also considering page-dirtiness. > > 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. Think so. We do have a problem here, but only on threaded apps, I believe. rtorrent doesn't appear to be threaded, and the bug is hit on non-preempt UP. > >>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. try_to_free_buffers() isn't called against a page which doesn't have buffers. It'll oops. > Were you testing with preempt? nope, just SMP. - 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/