From: Matthew Wilcox Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/5 resend] VFS: Fix s_umount thaw/write deadlock Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2011 16:49:20 -0700 Message-ID: <20111207234919.GW4387@parisc-linux.org> References: <1323118489-16326-1-git-send-email-kamal@canonical.com> <1323118489-16326-4-git-send-email-kamal@canonical.com> <20111206113544.GA21589@infradead.org> <20111207231658.GQ4622@quack.suse.cz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Christoph Hellwig , Kamal Mostafa , Alexander Viro , Andreas Dilger , Randy Dunlap , Theodore Tso , linux-doc@vger.kernel.org, linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Surbhi Palande , Valerie Aurora , Christopher Chaltain , "Peter M. Petrakis" , Mikulas Patocka , Miao Xie To: Jan Kara Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20111207231658.GQ4622@quack.suse.cz> Sender: linux-doc-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-ext4.vger.kernel.org On Thu, Dec 08, 2011 at 12:16:58AM +0100, Jan Kara wrote: > On Tue 06-12-11 06:35:44, Christoph Hellwig wrote: > > We make sure to not dirty any new inodes after the first phase of the > > freeze, so this should be a BUG_ON/WARN_ON. > This is not really true in presence of mmaped writes. To block mmaped > writes on a frozen filesystem, we need some synchronization between > page_mkwrite() and freezing code. Currently, to avoid any additional > locking overhead, we set page dirty and *then* check for filesystem being > frozen. Only this order can make sure either the page is written (and > write-protected) or the frozen check triggers and we wait... (see the > comment in block_page_mkwrite()). The nasty sideeffect of this is that > there can be dirty pages & inodes on a frozen filesystem. We are blocked in > the page fault of these pages so user cannot write any data to these pages > but still they are marked dirty. Can't we make the mmaps read-only during the freezing process? -- Matthew Wilcox Intel Open Source Technology Centre "Bill, look, we understand that you're interested in selling us this operating system, but compare it to ours. We can't possibly take such a retrograde step."