Re: [PATCH] fix bogus BUG_ONs in in mballoc code

[Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 01:46:57PM -0500, Eric Sandeen wrote:
> Thiemo Nagel reported that:
> 
> # dd if=/dev/zero of=image.ext4 bs=1M count=2
> # mkfs.ext4 -v -F -b 1024 -m 0 -g 512 -G 4 -I 128 -N 1 \
>   -O large_file,dir_index,flex_bg,extent,sparse_super image.ext4
> # mount -o loop image.ext4 mnt/
> # dd if=/dev/zero of=mnt/file
> 
> oopsed, with a BUG_ON in ext4_mb_normalize_request because
> size == EXT4_BLOCKS_PER_GROUP
> 
> It appears to me (esp. after talking to Andreas) that the BUG_ON
> is bogus; a request of exactly EXT4_BLOCKS_PER_GROUP should
> be allowed, though larger sizes do indicate a problem.

Clearly we should make this change to avoid the BUG_ON; but stupid
question, why shouldn't we allow sizes larger than
EXT4_BLOCKS_PER_GROUP?  

Especially with flex_bg, it is possible for an allocation size >
EXT4_BLOCKS_PER_GROUP to be satisifed, especially if the filesystem
isn't that full yet, and it might even make sense to request a larger
allocation for video files that are getting preallocated, for
example....

						- Ted