[2.6.30 and later] file corruption on ext3 filesystem.

From: Tetsuo Handa
Date: Thu Jan 07 2010 - 21:54:33 EST


Hello.

I'm experiencing file corruption problem.
Can somebody reproduce below result?

My environment:
VMware Workstation 6.5.3 with 2CPUs / 512MB RAM.
ext3 filesystem ( /dev/sda1 ) mounted on / .

2.6.33-rc3 ( http://I-love.SAKURA.ne.jp/tmp/config-2.6.33-rc3-ext3 )
2.6.32.3 ( http://I-love.SAKURA.ne.jp/tmp/config-2.6.32.3-ext3 )
2.6.31.11 ( http://I-love.SAKURA.ne.jp/tmp/config-2.6.31.11-ext3 )
2.6.30.10

So far, I haven't succeeded to reproduce this problem for 2.6.29 and earlier.
Maybe this problem exists in only 2.6.30 and later.

Steps to reproduce:

Compile below program using "gcc -Wall -O3 -o a.out".

----------
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
FILE *fp = fopen("/testfile", "a");
char buffer[4096];
memset(buffer, argc > 1 ? argv[1][0] : 0x20, sizeof(buffer));
buffer[sizeof(buffer) - 1] = '\n';
fwrite(buffer, 1, sizeof(buffer), fp);
fflush(fp);
sleep(5);
fprintf(stderr, "Let power fail after a few seconds.\n");
while (1) {
sleep(1);
fwrite(buffer, 1, sizeof(buffer), fp);
}
return 0;
}
----------

Reboot the system by executing /sbin/reboot .

Run ./a.out and let the power fail (i.e. unplug the electric cable
or do equivalent) after more than 5 seconds (i.e. longer than kjournald's
commit interval). Probably 2 or 3 seconds after
"Let power fail after a few seconds.\n" was printed is the best.

Restart the system (and fsck will be executed).

Run "cat /testfile". It should contain only lines of 4095 spaces + '\n'
(or the byte specified via argv[]). But it contains different data.

This problem does not show up if the data written by ./a.out and the data in
previously deleted files are identical. Therefore, you may want to try with
different patterns like "./a.out 1" "./a.out 2" "./a.out 3" ...

Regards.
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