Re: Apparent serious progressive ext4 data corruption bug in 3.6.3(and other stable branches?)

From: Eric Sandeen
Date: Sun Oct 28 2012 - 22:24:22 EST


On 10/28/12 8:00 PM, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 05:42:07PM -0500, Eric Sandeen wrote:
>>
>> It looks like the inode_bitmap_bh is being modified outside a transaction:
>>
>> ret2 = ext4_test_and_set_bit(ino, inode_bitmap_bh->b_data);
>>
>> It needs a get_write_access / handle_dirty_metadata pair around it.
>
> Oops. Nice catch!!
>
> The patch isn't quite right, though.

Yeah, I knew it wasn't ;) I did resend
[PATCH] ext4: fix unjournaled inode bitmap modification
which is a bit more involved.

> We only want to call
> ext4_journal_get_write_access() when we know that there is an available
> bit in the bitmap. (We could still lose the race, but in that case
> the winner of the race probably grabbed the bitmap block first.)
>
> Also, we only need to call ext4_handle_dirty_metadata() if we
> successfully grab the bit in the bitmap.
>
> So I suggest this patch instead:

That'll get_write_access on the same buffer over and over, I suppose
it's ok, but the patch I sent tries to minimize that, and call
ext4_handle_release_buffer if we're not going to use it (which is
a no-op today anyway and not normally used I guess...)

If ext4_handle_release_buffer() is dead code now, and repeated calls
via repeat_in_this_group: are no big deal, then your version looks fine.

-Eric

> commit 087eda81f1ac6a6a0394f781b44f1d555d8f64c6
> Author: Eric Sandeen <sandeen@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Sun Oct 28 20:59:57 2012 -0400
>
> ext4: fix unjournaled inode bitmap modification
>
> commit 119c0d4460b001e44b41dcf73dc6ee794b98bd31 modified this function
> such that the inode bitmap was being modified outside a transaction,
> which could lead to corruption, and was discovered when journal_checksum
> found a bad checksum in the journal.
>
> Reported-by: Nix <nix@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Eric Sandeen <sandeen@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@xxxxxxx>
> Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> diff --git a/fs/ext4/ialloc.c b/fs/ext4/ialloc.c
> index 4facdd2..575afac 100644
> --- a/fs/ext4/ialloc.c
> +++ b/fs/ext4/ialloc.c
> @@ -725,6 +725,10 @@ repeat_in_this_group:
> "inode=%lu", ino + 1);
> continue;
> }
> + BUFFER_TRACE(inode_bitmap_bh, "get_write_access");
> + err = ext4_journal_get_write_access(handle, inode_bitmap_bh);
> + if (err)
> + goto fail;
> ext4_lock_group(sb, group);
> ret2 = ext4_test_and_set_bit(ino, inode_bitmap_bh->b_data);
> ext4_unlock_group(sb, group);
> @@ -738,6 +742,11 @@ repeat_in_this_group:
> goto out;
>
> got:
> + BUFFER_TRACE(inode_bitmap_bh, "call ext4_handle_dirty_metadata");
> + err = ext4_handle_dirty_metadata(handle, NULL, inode_bitmap_bh);
> + if (err)
> + goto fail;
> +
> /* We may have to initialize the block bitmap if it isn't already */
> if (ext4_has_group_desc_csum(sb) &&
> gdp->bg_flags & cpu_to_le16(EXT4_BG_BLOCK_UNINIT)) {
> --
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