Re: [2.6.30 and later] file corruption on ext3 filesystem.

[Ric Wheeler <rwheeler@redhat.com>]

On 01/08/2010 09:53 PM, Tetsuo Handa wrote:
> Dave Chinner wrote:
>    
>> I agree that it is very wrong, but it's a known problem with writeback
>> mode in ext3:
>>
>> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/818044/focus=819977
>>
>> More info as to how this change came about and the proposed but not
>> yet realised fixes:
>>
>> http://lwn.net/Articles/328363/
>>      
> Thank you for the pointer.
>
> Indeed, most Linux boxes are used by single user.
> But implicitly importing other deleted file's data is still annoying
> even if the box is used by only one user.
>
> When I was trying to identify the steps to reproduce, I got ./a.out replaced
> by the deleted .bash_history due to power failure. I executed ./a.out as root
> without knowing that the file contains deleted .bash_history , and many
> commands listed in deleted .bash_history are executed as root.
> I thought my box was cracked and trojaned. :-(
>    

Fedora and some other distributions changed the default back to data 
ordered mode in order to avoid exactly this kind of mess. Even if you 
are on a single user system, this behavior is certainly unexpected for 
most users :-)

Ric