From: Alex Buell Subject: Re: EXT4 ENOSPC Bug Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:21:15 +0000 Message-ID: <20090217172115.7a42044a@lithium.local.net> References: <20090216162028.3032666a@lithium.local.net> <200811291418.24672.andres@anarazel.de> <200812100108.04163.andres@anarazel.de> <49994FEF.2020908@anarazel.de> <20090216150156.GD22619@mini-me.lan> <499985C7.8010302@anarazel.de> <20090216190001.GB11788@mini-me.lan> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Andres Freund , adilger@sun.com, LKML , linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org, Jonathan Bastien-Filiatrault , "Aneesh Kumar K.V" To: Theodore Tso Return-path: In-Reply-To: <20090216190001.GB11788@mini-me.lan> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-ext4.vger.kernel.org On Mon, 16 Feb 2009 14:00:01 -0500, I waved a wand and this message magically appears in front of Theodore Tso: > On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 04:27:03PM +0100, Andres Freund wrote: > > > > So, yes, seems to be an inode allocation problem. > > Andres, Alex, others, > > I'm pretty sure the ENOSPC problem which you both found is an inode > allocation problem. Some of you seem to have an easier time > reproducing it than others; could you try this patch, and periodically > scan your system logs for the message "ext4: find_group_flex failed, > fallback succeeded"? If the problem goes away for you, and you find > the occasional aforemention message in your system log, that will > confirm what I suspect, which is the bug is in fs/ext4/inode.c's > find_group_flex() function. (If I'm wrong, the fallback code will > activate only when the filesystem is genuinely out of inodes, which > should be very rare.) OK, I had to go look through the archives on linux-ext4 mailing list to see what the context was. For myself, this used to happen at least once a week with 2.6.26, and less frequently with 2.6.27. I think that 2.6.28 with your patch should get rid of that problem altogether. I will of course get in touch should I see any more of these find_group_flex failures as that would mean your patch worked. Thanks for your work on tracking this one down! -- http://www.munted.org.uk Fearsome grindings.