Skip to content
Commit 5afced3b authored by Jan Kara's avatar Jan Kara
Browse files

writeback: Avoid skipping inode writeback



Inode's i_io_list list head is used to attach inode to several different
lists - wb->{b_dirty, b_dirty_time, b_io, b_more_io}. When flush worker
prepares a list of inodes to writeback e.g. for sync(2), it moves inodes
to b_io list. Thus it is critical for sync(2) data integrity guarantees
that inode is not requeued to any other writeback list when inode is
queued for processing by flush worker. That's the reason why
writeback_single_inode() does not touch i_io_list (unless the inode is
completely clean) and why __mark_inode_dirty() does not touch i_io_list
if I_SYNC flag is set.

However there are two flaws in the current logic:

1) When inode has only I_DIRTY_TIME set but it is already queued in b_io
list due to sync(2), concurrent __mark_inode_dirty(inode, I_DIRTY_SYNC)
can still move inode back to b_dirty list resulting in skipping
writeback of inode time stamps during sync(2).

2) When inode is on b_dirty_time list and writeback_single_inode() races
with __mark_inode_dirty() like:

writeback_single_inode()		__mark_inode_dirty(inode, I_DIRTY_PAGES)
  inode->i_state |= I_SYNC
  __writeback_single_inode()
					  inode->i_state |= I_DIRTY_PAGES;
					  if (inode->i_state & I_SYNC)
					    bail
  if (!(inode->i_state & I_DIRTY_ALL))
  - not true so nothing done

We end up with I_DIRTY_PAGES inode on b_dirty_time list and thus
standard background writeback will not writeback this inode leading to
possible dirty throttling stalls etc. (thanks to Martijn Coenen for this
analysis).

Fix these problems by tracking whether inode is queued in b_io or
b_more_io lists in a new I_SYNC_QUEUED flag. When this flag is set, we
know flush worker has queued inode and we should not touch i_io_list.
On the other hand we also know that once flush worker is done with the
inode it will requeue the inode to appropriate dirty list. When
I_SYNC_QUEUED is not set, __mark_inode_dirty() can (and must) move inode
to appropriate dirty list.

Reported-by: default avatarMartijn Coenen <maco@android.com>
Reviewed-by: default avatarMartijn Coenen <maco@android.com>
Tested-by: default avatarMartijn Coenen <maco@android.com>
Reviewed-by: default avatarChristoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Fixes: 0ae45f63 ("vfs: add support for a lazytime mount option")
CC: stable@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: default avatarJan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
parent b35250c0
0% or .
You are about to add 0 people to the discussion. Proceed with caution.
Finish editing this message first!
Please register or to comment