Re: [bug report] writeback: sync returns with dirty pages exist

[Tejun Heo <tj-DgEjT+Ai2ygdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org>]

Hello, Xuejiufei.

On Mon, Dec 04, 2017 at 03:13:34PM +0800, xuejiufei wrote:
> I have found that system call sync may return even if dirty pages still
> exist. This is caused by the following case:
>
> sync
> -> sync_inodes_sb()
>   -> bdi_split_work_to_wbs() queue works for each wb
>   -> wb_wait_for_completions() wait for these works to complete.
> 
> >>>>>> race window. Writeback thread found it should switch to another
> new wb while doing foreign cgroup detect. So a new wb is created, and
> the inodes are move from old wb to the new one. The writeback work for
> old wb is done, so the sync process is woken while the inodes with dirty
> pages are still queued in new wb.

So, wb_wait_for_completion() may end up returning earlier than
expected but data integrity is waited by wait_sb_inodes() which isn't
affected by inode cgroup wb migrations.  Have you actually seen this
happening?

Thanks.

-- 
tejun