From: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/6] ext4: Fix races between page faults and hole punching
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2015 07:22:14 +1100
Message-ID: <20151015202214.GR27164@dastard>
References: <1444822227-29984-1-git-send-email-jack@suse.com>
 <1444822227-29984-2-git-send-email-jack@suse.com>
 <20151015030059.GB31087@linux.intel.com>
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Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.com>, linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org,
	Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>,
	Matthew Wilcox <matthew.r.wilcox@intel.com>
To: Ross Zwisler <ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com>
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <20151015030059.GB31087@linux.intel.com>
Sender: linux-ext4-owner@vger.kernel.org

On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 09:00:59PM -0600, Ross Zwisler wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 01:30:22PM +0200, Jan Kara wrote:
> > Currently, page faults and hole punching are completely unsynchronized.
> > This can result in page fault faulting in a page into a range that we
> > are punching after truncate_pagecache_range() has been called and thus
> > we can end up with a page mapped to disk blocks that will be shortly
> > freed. Filesystem corruption will shortly follow. Note that the same
> > race is avoided for truncate by checking page fault offset against
> > i_size but there isn't similar mechanism available for punching holes.
> > 
> > Fix the problem by creating new rw semaphore i_mmap_sem in inode and
> > grab it for writing over truncate and hole punching and for read over
> > page faults. We cannot easily use i_data_sem for this since that ranks
> > below transaction start and we need something ranking above it so that
> > it can be held over the whole truncate / hole punching operation.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.com>
> > ---
> >  fs/ext4/ext4.h  | 10 +++++++++
> >  fs/ext4/file.c  | 66 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------
> >  fs/ext4/inode.c | 27 +++++++++++++++++++----
> >  fs/ext4/super.c |  1 +
> >  4 files changed, 91 insertions(+), 13 deletions(-)
> 
> I wonder if there are a few other operations in ext4_fallocate() that
> we may need to protect in addition to ext4_punch_hole()?
> 
> Do ext4_collapse_range(), ext4_insert_range() and maybe even ext4_zero_range()
> need protection?

Yes, they do. Anything that does direct extent manipulation needs
to invalidate current mappings across the range and that requires
page fault serialisation.

Cheers,

Dave.
-- 
Dave Chinner
david@fromorbit.com