From: Arthur Jones Subject: [PATCH] ext3: wait on all pending commits in ext3_sync_fs Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 10:44:26 -0800 Message-ID: <20081103184426.GA31894@ajones-laptop.nbttech.com> References: <4908C951.2000309@redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Cc: "linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org" , "sct@redhat.com" , "akpm@linux-foundation.org" , "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" To: Eric Sandeen Return-path: Received: from smtp1.riverbed.com ([206.169.144.12]:39566 "EHLO smtp1.riverbed.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751393AbYKCSo2 (ORCPT ); Mon, 3 Nov 2008 13:44:28 -0500 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4908C951.2000309@redhat.com> Sender: linux-ext4-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Hi Eric, This patch fixes the problem for me, and seems to put the buffers on the dirty list at the place where they are put on the list during the working case. Despite having rooted around in the innards of ext3 for the last few days, I cannot say that I have any sense of whether this patch will cause problems elsewhere or even if this is the best place to intercede. I post the complete patch not because I think it should be committed as is, but rather to try to explain the logic that brought it about. At the very least, this should be reviewed by the experts here to make sure there is no collateral damage. Arthur ------------------- In ext3_sync_fs, we only wait for a commit to finish if we started it, but there may be one already in progress which will not be synced. In the case of a data=ordered umount with pending long symlinks which are delayed due to a long list of other I/O on the backing block device, this causes the buffer associated with the long symlinks to not be moved to the inode dirty list in the second phase of fsync_super. Then, before they can be dirtied again, kjournald exits, seeing the UMOUNT flag and the dirty pages are never written to the backing block device, causing long symlink corruption and exposing new or previously freed block data to userspace. This can be reproduced with a script created by Eric Sandeen : #!/bin/bash umount /mnt/test2 mount /dev/sdb4 /mnt/test2 rm -f /mnt/test2/* dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/test2/bigfile bs=1M count=512 touch /mnt/test2/thisisveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryverylongfilename ln -s /mnt/test2/thisisveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryverylongfilename /mnt/test2/link umount /mnt/test2 mount /dev/sdb4 /mnt/test2 ls /mnt/test2/ umount /mnt/test2 To ensure all commits are synced, we flush all journal commits now when sync_fs'ing ext3. Signed-off-by: Arthur Jones --- fs/ext3/super.c | 8 +++++++- 1 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-) diff --git a/fs/ext3/super.c b/fs/ext3/super.c index 18eaa78..053659a 100644 --- a/fs/ext3/super.c +++ b/fs/ext3/super.c @@ -2392,7 +2392,13 @@ static int ext3_sync_fs(struct super_block *sb, int wait) if (journal_start_commit(EXT3_SB(sb)->s_journal, &target)) { if (wait) log_wait_commit(EXT3_SB(sb)->s_journal, target); - } + } else if (wait) + /* + * We may have a commit in progress, clear it out + * before we go on... + */ + ext3_force_commit(sb); + return 0; } -- 1.5.4.3