From: Eric Sandeen Subject: Re: EXT4-fs (dm-1): Couldn't remount RDWR because of unprocessed orphan inode list Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2011 11:44:45 -0500 Message-ID: <4E664DFD.80308@redhat.com> References: <4E66478E.90102@redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org To: Christian Kujau Return-path: Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([209.132.183.28]:38624 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753061Ab1IFR3s (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 Sep 2011 13:29:48 -0400 In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-ext4-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On 9/6/11 11:37 AM, Christian Kujau wrote: > On Tue, 6 Sep 2011 at 11:17, Eric Sandeen wrote: >> It's probably not a bug or flaw; orphan inodes can occur for legitimate >> reasons (fs goes down while someone is holding open an unlinked file), > > The filesystem is being constantly accessed by an application, holding at > least one file open (readonly). And then there is this mechanism trying to > remount the filesystem rw and then ro again every day. I guess this equals > the scenario of "fs goes down (remount!) while someone is holding open a > file"? well, no - "goes down" means "crashed or lost power" >> Did you happen to also get a message like this on the original mount? >> ext4_msg(sb, KERN_ERR, "write access " >> "unavailable, skipping orphan cleanup"); > > I think I've seen this message before, but I'm nore sure where and it's > not in the logs of this particular system. > >> See also commit: >> >> commit ead6596b9e776ac32d82f7d1931d7638e6d4a7bd >> Author: Eric Sandeen >> Date: Sat Feb 10 01:46:08 2007 -0800 >> >> [PATCH] ext4: refuse ro to rw remount of fs with orphan inodes > > Yes, I've seen this commit when I was searching where this message came > from. And I think I understand now why this is happening, but > still...if I may ask: can't this be handled more elegantly? Do other > filesystems have the same problem? well, as the commit said, it'd be nice to handle it in remount, yes... :( > Right now the procedure is to pause the application, stop the nfs exports, > unmount, fsck, mount, start nfs exports and resume the application. And > every few days/weeks this has to be repeated, "just because" these daily > remounts occur (which are the main reason for this, I suppose). well, seems like you need to get to the root cause of the unprocessed orphan inodes. I don't yet have my post-vacation thinking cap back on... does cycling rw/ro/rw/ro with open & unlinked files cause an orphan inode situation? -Eric > Thanks for replying, > Christian.