Re: Race between generic_forget_inode() and sync_sb_inodes()?

[David Chinner <dgc@sgi.com>]

On Fri, Nov 30, 2007 at 09:07:06AM +1100, Neil Brown wrote:
> 
> Hi David,
> 
> On Friday November 30, dgc@sgi.com wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > I came across this because I've been making changes to XFS to avoid the
> > inode hash, and I've found that I need to remove the inode from the
> > dirty list when setting I_WILL_FREE to avoid this race. I can't see
> > how this race is avoided when inodes are hashed, so I'm wondering
> > if we've just been lucky or there's something that I'm missing that
> > means the above does not occur.
> 
> Looking at inode.c in 2.6.23-mm1, in generic_forget_inode, I see code:
> 
> 	if (!hlist_unhashed(&inode->i_hash)) {
> 		if (!(inode->i_state & (I_DIRTY|I_SYNC)))
> 			list_move(&inode->i_list, &inode_unused);
> 
> so it looks to me like:
>    If the inode is hashed and dirty, then move it (off the s_dirty
>    list) to inode_unused.

That check is for if the inode is _not_ dirty or being sync, right?
Or have I just not had enough coffee this morning?

Cheers,

Dave.
-- 
Dave Chinner
Principal Engineer
SGI Australian Software Group