Re: [RFC][PATCH] ext3: don't read inode block if the buffer has a write error

Nick Piggin
2008-06-23T12:36:47Z

On Monday 23 June 2008 22:31, Jan Kara wrote:
> On Mon 23-06-08 21:46:27, Nick Piggin wrote:

> > I don't know why it was done like this, or if anybody actually tested
> > any of it, but AFAIKS the best way to fix this is to simply not
> > clear any uptodate bits upon write errors.
>
> That would be non-trivial effort because there are lots of places which
> do things like:
> wait_on_buffer(bh);
> if (!buffer_uptodate)
> /* IO error handling */
>
> But what you say sounds like a reasonable thing from a logical
> perspective.

For reads, that's obviously a common pattern, although even that's
broken in some cases where it is used. But definitely uptodate should
not be set on a read error (although does it need to be explicitly
cleared? I would hope we don't submit a read anyway if the page/buffer
is already uptodate).

But you're right, even changing this for writes would not be a trivial
effort.