Re: [PATCH] ext2: Avoid WARN() messages when failing to write tothe superblock

From: Pavel Machek
Date: Mon Oct 26 2009 - 03:56:57 EST


On Mon 2009-10-26 00:08:10, Theodore Tso wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 25, 2009 at 07:21:28AM +0100, Pavel Machek wrote:
> > > + if (buffer_write_io_error(sbh)) {
> > > + /*
> > > + * Oh, dear. A previous attempt to write the
> > > + * superblock failed. This could happen because the
> > > + * USB device was yanked out. Or it could happen to
> > > + * be a transient write error and maybe the block will
> > > + * be remapped. Nothing we can do but to retry the
> > > + * write and hope for the best.
> > > + */
> > > + printk(KERN_ERR "EXT2-fs: %s previous I/O error to "
> > > + "superblock detected", sb->s_id);
> >
> > KERN_ALERT/KERN_CRITICAL?
>
> Based on kerneloops.org logs, it's apparently very frequent that
> clueless lusers rip out USB drives without bothering to unmount them
> first. (Or people by crappy laptops where the SD cards sticks out
> slightly and is easily jostled.) It's not clear we really want to be
> issueing KERN_ALERT or KERN_CRITICAL messages when this very common
> event happens.

I'd say that frequency of the message should not determine the
priority. (If this happens on your root filesystem you are in deep
trouble, and it _should_ be broadcast on all consoles).

OTOH filesystem should be handle device unplug just fine, so not
issuing this in that case would be nice...
Pavel
--
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html
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