Re: writev data loss bug in (at least) 2.6.31 and 2.6.32pre8 x86-64

Re: writev data loss bug in (at least) 2.6.31 and 2.6.32pre8 x86-64

[Jan Kara]

On Tue 01-12-09 12:42:45, Mike Galbraith wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-11-30 at 19:48 -0500, James Y Knight wrote:
> > On Nov 30, 2009, at 3:55 PM, James Y Knight wrote:
> > 
> > > This test case fails in 2.6.23-2.6.25, because of the bug fixed in 864f24395c72b6a6c48d13f409f986dc71a5cf4a, and now again in at least 2.6.31 and 2.6.32pre8 because of a *different* bug. This test *does not* fail 2.6.26. I have not tested anything between 2.6.26 and 2.6.31.
> > > 
> > > The bug in 2.6.31 is definitely not the same bug as 2.6.23's. This time, the zero'd area of the file doesn't show up immediately upon writing the file. Instead, the kernel waits to mangle the file until it has to flush the buffer to disk. *THEN* it zeros out parts of the file.
> > > 
> > > So, after writing out the new file with writev, and checking the md5sum (which is correct), this test case asks the kernel to flush the cache for that file, and then checks the md5sum again. ONLY THEN is the file corrupted. That is, I won't hesitate to say *incredibly evil* behavior: it took me quite some time to figure out WTH was going wrong with my program before determining it was a kernel bug.
> > > 
> > > This test case is distilled from an actual application which doesn't even intentionally use writev: it just uses C++'s ofstream class to write data to a file. Unfortunately, that class smart and uses writev under the covers. Unfortunately, I guess nobody ever tests linux writev behavior, since it's broken _so_much_of_the_time_. I really am quite astounded to see such a bad track record for such a fundamental core system call....
> > > 
> > > My /tmp is an ext3 filesystem, in case that matters.
> > 
> > Further testing shows that the filesystem type *does* matter. The bug does not exhibit when the test is run on ext2, ext4, vfat, btrfs, jfs, or xfs (and probably all the others too). Only, so far as I can determine, on ext3.
> 
> I bisected it this morning.  Bisected cleanly to...
> 
> 9eaaa2d5759837402ec5eee13b2a97921808c3eb is the first bad commit
  OK, I've debugged it. This commit is really at fault. The problem is
following:
  When using writev, the page we copy from is not paged in (while when we
use ordinary write, it is paged in). This difference might be worth
investigation on its own (as it is likely to heavily impact performance of
writev) but is irrelevant for us now - we should handle this without data
corruption anyway. Because the source page is not available, we pass 0 as
the number of copied bytes to write_end and thus ext3_write_end decides to
truncate the file to original size. This is perfectly fine. The problem is
that we do this by ext3_truncate() which just frees corresponding block but
does not unmap buffers. So we leave mapped buffers beyond i_size (they
actually never were inside i_size) but the blocks they are mapped to are
already free. The write is then retried (after mapping the page),
block_write_begin() sees the buffer is mapped (although it is beyond
i_size) and thus it does not call ext3_get_block() anymore. So as a result,
data is written to a block that is no longer allocated to the file. Bummer
- welcome filesystem corruption.
  Ext4 also has this problem but delayed allocation mitigates the effect to
an error in accounting of blocks reserved for delayed allocation and thus
under normal circumstances nothing bad happens.
  The question is how to solve this in the cleanest way. We can call
vmtruncate() instead of ext3_truncate() as we used to do but Nick wants to
get rid of that (that's why I originally changed the code to what it is
now). So probably we could just manually call truncate_pagecache() instead.
Nick, I think your truncate calling sequence patch set needs similar fix
for all filesystems as well.

								Honza

Re: writev data loss bug in (at least) 2.6.31 and 2.6.32pre8 x86-64

[Jan Kara]

On Tue 01-12-09 15:35:59, Jan Kara wrote:
> On Tue 01-12-09 12:42:45, Mike Galbraith wrote:
> > On Mon, 2009-11-30 at 19:48 -0500, James Y Knight wrote:
> > > On Nov 30, 2009, at 3:55 PM, James Y Knight wrote:
> > > 
> > > > This test case fails in 2.6.23-2.6.25, because of the bug fixed in 864f24395c72b6a6c48d13f409f986dc71a5cf4a, and now again in at least 2.6.31 and 2.6.32pre8 because of a *different* bug. This test *does not* fail 2.6.26. I have not tested anything between 2.6.26 and 2.6.31.
> > > > 
> > > > The bug in 2.6.31 is definitely not the same bug as 2.6.23's. This time, the zero'd area of the file doesn't show up immediately upon writing the file. Instead, the kernel waits to mangle the file until it has to flush the buffer to disk. *THEN* it zeros out parts of the file.
> > > > 
> > > > So, after writing out the new file with writev, and checking the md5sum (which is correct), this test case asks the kernel to flush the cache for that file, and then checks the md5sum again. ONLY THEN is the file corrupted. That is, I won't hesitate to say *incredibly evil* behavior: it took me quite some time to figure out WTH was going wrong with my program before determining it was a kernel bug.
> > > > 
> > > > This test case is distilled from an actual application which doesn't even intentionally use writev: it just uses C++'s ofstream class to write data to a file. Unfortunately, that class smart and uses writev under the covers. Unfortunately, I guess nobody ever tests linux writev behavior, since it's broken _so_much_of_the_time_. I really am quite astounded to see such a bad track record for such a fundamental core system call....
> > > > 
> > > > My /tmp is an ext3 filesystem, in case that matters.
> > > 
> > > Further testing shows that the filesystem type *does* matter. The bug does not exhibit when the test is run on ext2, ext4, vfat, btrfs, jfs, or xfs (and probably all the others too). Only, so far as I can determine, on ext3.
> > 
> > I bisected it this morning.  Bisected cleanly to...
> > 
> > 9eaaa2d5759837402ec5eee13b2a97921808c3eb is the first bad commit
>   OK, I've debugged it. This commit is really at fault. The problem is
> following:
>   When using writev, the page we copy from is not paged in (while when we
> use ordinary write, it is paged in). This difference might be worth
> investigation on its own (as it is likely to heavily impact performance of
> writev) but is irrelevant for us now - we should handle this without data
> corruption anyway. Because the source page is not available, we pass 0 as
> the number of copied bytes to write_end and thus ext3_write_end decides to
> truncate the file to original size. This is perfectly fine. The problem is
> that we do this by ext3_truncate() which just frees corresponding block but
> does not unmap buffers. So we leave mapped buffers beyond i_size (they
> actually never were inside i_size) but the blocks they are mapped to are
> already free. The write is then retried (after mapping the page),
> block_write_begin() sees the buffer is mapped (although it is beyond
> i_size) and thus it does not call ext3_get_block() anymore. So as a result,
> data is written to a block that is no longer allocated to the file. Bummer
> - welcome filesystem corruption.
>   Ext4 also has this problem but delayed allocation mitigates the effect to
> an error in accounting of blocks reserved for delayed allocation and thus
> under normal circumstances nothing bad happens.
>   The question is how to solve this in the cleanest way. We can call
> vmtruncate() instead of ext3_truncate() as we used to do but Nick wants to
> get rid of that (that's why I originally changed the code to what it is
> now). So probably we could just manually call truncate_pagecache() instead.
> Nick, I think your truncate calling sequence patch set needs similar fix
> for all filesystems as well.
  The patch below fixes the issue for me...

									Honza

>From 1b2ad411dd86afbfdb3c5b0f913230e9f1f0b858 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2009 16:53:06 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] ext3: Fix data / filesystem corruption when write fails to copy data

When ext3_write_begin fails after allocating some blocks or
generic_perform_write fails to copy data to write, we truncate blocks already
instantiated beyond i_size. Although these blocks were never inside i_size, we
have to truncate pagecache of these blocks so that corresponding buffers get
unmapped. Otherwise subsequent __block_prepare_write (called because we are
retrying the write) will find the buffers mapped, not call ->get_block, and
thus the page will be backed by already freed blocks leading to filesystem and
data corruption.

Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
---
 fs/ext3/inode.c |   18 ++++++++++++++----
 1 files changed, 14 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/fs/ext3/inode.c b/fs/ext3/inode.c
index 354ed3b..f9d6937 100644
--- a/fs/ext3/inode.c
+++ b/fs/ext3/inode.c
@@ -1151,6 +1151,16 @@ static int do_journal_get_write_access(handle_t *handle,
 	return ext3_journal_get_write_access(handle, bh);
 }
 
+/*
+ * Truncate blocks that were not used by write. We have to truncate the
+ * pagecache as well so that corresponding buffers get properly unmapped.
+ */
+static void ext3_truncate_failed_write(struct inode *inode)
+{
+	truncate_inode_pages(inode->i_mapping, inode->i_size);
+	ext3_truncate(inode);
+}
+
 static int ext3_write_begin(struct file *file, struct address_space *mapping,
 				loff_t pos, unsigned len, unsigned flags,
 				struct page **pagep, void **fsdata)
@@ -1209,7 +1219,7 @@ write_begin_failed:
 		unlock_page(page);
 		page_cache_release(page);
 		if (pos + len > inode->i_size)
-			ext3_truncate(inode);
+			ext3_truncate_failed_write(inode);
 	}
 	if (ret == -ENOSPC && ext3_should_retry_alloc(inode->i_sb, &retries))
 		goto retry;
@@ -1304,7 +1314,7 @@ static int ext3_ordered_write_end(struct file *file,
 	page_cache_release(page);
 
 	if (pos + len > inode->i_size)
-		ext3_truncate(inode);
+		ext3_truncate_failed_write(inode);
 	return ret ? ret : copied;
 }
 
@@ -1330,7 +1340,7 @@ static int ext3_writeback_write_end(struct file *file,
 	page_cache_release(page);
 
 	if (pos + len > inode->i_size)
-		ext3_truncate(inode);
+		ext3_truncate_failed_write(inode);
 	return ret ? ret : copied;
 }
 
@@ -1383,7 +1393,7 @@ static int ext3_journalled_write_end(struct file *file,
 	page_cache_release(page);
 
 	if (pos + len > inode->i_size)
-		ext3_truncate(inode);
+		ext3_truncate_failed_write(inode);
 	return ret ? ret : copied;
 }
 
-- 
1.6.4.2

Re: writev data loss bug in (at least) 2.6.31 and 2.6.32pre8 x86-64

[Mike Galbraith]

On Tue, 2009-12-01 at 17:03 +0100, Jan Kara wrote:

>   The patch below fixes the issue for me...

Ditto.

	-Mike

Re: writev data loss bug in (at least) 2.6.31 and 2.6.32pre8 x86-64

[Andreas Dilger]

On 2009-12-01, at 09:03, Jan Kara wrote:
> On Tue 01-12-09 15:35:59, Jan Kara wrote:
>> On Tue 01-12-09 12:42:45, Mike Galbraith wrote:
>>> On Mon, 2009-11-30 at 19:48 -0500, James Y Knight wrote:
>>>> On Nov 30, 2009, at 3:55 PM, James Y Knight wrote:
>>>>> This test case is distilled from an actual application which  
>>>>> doesn't even intentionally use writev: it just uses C++'s  
>>>>> ofstream class to write data to a file. Unfortunately, that  
>>>>> class smart and uses writev under the covers. Unfortunately, I  
>>>>> guess nobody ever tests linux writev behavior, since it's broken  
>>>>> _so_much_of_the_time_. I really am quite astounded to see such a  
>>>>> bad track record for such a fundamental core system call....

I suspect an excellent way of exposing problems with the writev()  
interface would be to wire it into fsx, which is commonly run as a  
stress test for Linux.  I don't know if it would have caught this  
case, but it definitely couldn't hurt to get more testing cycles for it.

>>  Ext4 also has this problem but delayed allocation mitigates the  
>> effect to an error in accounting of blocks reserved for delayed  
>> allocation and thus under normal circumstances nothing bad happens.

It looks like ext4 might still hit this problem, if delalloc is  
disabled.  Could you please submit a similar patch for ext4 also.

>  The patch below fixes the issue for me...
>
> 									Honza
>
> From 1b2ad411dd86afbfdb3c5b0f913230e9f1f0b858 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
> Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2009 16:53:06 +0100
> Subject: [PATCH] ext3: Fix data / filesystem corruption when write  
> fails to copy data
>
> When ext3_write_begin fails after allocating some blocks or  
> generic_perform_write fails to copy data to write, we truncate  
> blocks already instantiated beyond i_size. Although these blocks  
> were never inside i_size, we have to truncate pagecache of these  
> blocks so that corresponding buffers get unmapped. Otherwise  
> subsequent __block_prepare_write (called because we are retrying the  
> write) will find the buffers mapped, not call ->get_block, and thus  
> the page will be backed by already freed blocks leading to  
> filesystem and data corruption.
>
> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
> ---
> fs/ext3/inode.c |   18 ++++++++++++++----
> 1 files changed, 14 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/fs/ext3/inode.c b/fs/ext3/inode.c
> index 354ed3b..f9d6937 100644
> --- a/fs/ext3/inode.c
> +++ b/fs/ext3/inode.c
> @@ -1151,6 +1151,16 @@ static int  
> do_journal_get_write_access(handle_t *handle,
> 	return ext3_journal_get_write_access(handle, bh);
> }
>
> +/*
> + * Truncate blocks that were not used by write. We have to truncate  
> the
> + * pagecache as well so that corresponding buffers get properly  
> unmapped.
> + */
> +static void ext3_truncate_failed_write(struct inode *inode)
> +{
> +	truncate_inode_pages(inode->i_mapping, inode->i_size);
> +	ext3_truncate(inode);
> +}
> +
> static int ext3_write_begin(struct file *file, struct address_space  
> *mapping,
> 				loff_t pos, unsigned len, unsigned flags,
> 				struct page **pagep, void **fsdata)
> @@ -1209,7 +1219,7 @@ write_begin_failed:
> 		unlock_page(page);
> 		page_cache_release(page);
> 		if (pos + len > inode->i_size)
> -			ext3_truncate(inode);
> +			ext3_truncate_failed_write(inode);
> 	}
> 	if (ret == -ENOSPC && ext3_should_retry_alloc(inode->i_sb, &retries))
> 		goto retry;
> @@ -1304,7 +1314,7 @@ static int ext3_ordered_write_end(struct file  
> *file,
> 	page_cache_release(page);
>
> 	if (pos + len > inode->i_size)
> -		ext3_truncate(inode);
> +		ext3_truncate_failed_write(inode);
> 	return ret ? ret : copied;
> }
>
> @@ -1330,7 +1340,7 @@ static int ext3_writeback_write_end(struct  
> file *file,
> 	page_cache_release(page);
>
> 	if (pos + len > inode->i_size)
> -		ext3_truncate(inode);
> +		ext3_truncate_failed_write(inode);
> 	return ret ? ret : copied;
> }
>
> @@ -1383,7 +1393,7 @@ static int ext3_journalled_write_end(struct  
> file *file,
> 	page_cache_release(page);
>
> 	if (pos + len > inode->i_size)
> -		ext3_truncate(inode);
> +		ext3_truncate_failed_write(inode);
> 	return ret ? ret : copied;
> }
>
> -- 
> 1.6.4.2
>
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux- 
> ext4" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html


Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
Sr. Staff Engineer, Lustre Group
Sun Microsystems of Canada, Inc.

Re: writev data loss bug in (at least) 2.6.31 and 2.6.32pre8 x86-64

[Randy Dunlap]

On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:02:04 -0700 Andreas Dilger wrote:

> On 2009-12-01, at 09:03, Jan Kara wrote:
> > On Tue 01-12-09 15:35:59, Jan Kara wrote:
> >> On Tue 01-12-09 12:42:45, Mike Galbraith wrote:
> >>> On Mon, 2009-11-30 at 19:48 -0500, James Y Knight wrote:
> >>>> On Nov 30, 2009, at 3:55 PM, James Y Knight wrote:
> >>>>> This test case is distilled from an actual application which  
> >>>>> doesn't even intentionally use writev: it just uses C++'s  
> >>>>> ofstream class to write data to a file. Unfortunately, that  
> >>>>> class smart and uses writev under the covers. Unfortunately, I  
> >>>>> guess nobody ever tests linux writev behavior, since it's broken  
> >>>>> _so_much_of_the_time_. I really am quite astounded to see such a  
> >>>>> bad track record for such a fundamental core system call....
> 
> I suspect an excellent way of exposing problems with the writev()  
> interface would be to wire it into fsx, which is commonly run as a  
> stress test for Linux.  I don't know if it would have caught this  
> case, but it definitely couldn't hurt to get more testing cycles for it.

Maybe someone from LTP would be interested in adding this test functionality
to fsx-linux ?

Source/test program is available at
http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=125961612418323&w=2


> >>  Ext4 also has this problem but delayed allocation mitigates the  
> >> effect to an error in accounting of blocks reserved for delayed  
> >> allocation and thus under normal circumstances nothing bad happens.
> 
> It looks like ext4 might still hit this problem, if delalloc is  
> disabled.  Could you please submit a similar patch for ext4 also.
> 
> >  The patch below fixes the issue for me...
> >
> > 									Honza
> >
> > From 1b2ad411dd86afbfdb3c5b0f913230e9f1f0b858 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> > From: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
> > Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2009 16:53:06 +0100
> > Subject: [PATCH] ext3: Fix data / filesystem corruption when write  
> > fails to copy data
> >
> > When ext3_write_begin fails after allocating some blocks or  
> > generic_perform_write fails to copy data to write, we truncate  
> > blocks already instantiated beyond i_size. Although these blocks  
> > were never inside i_size, we have to truncate pagecache of these  
> > blocks so that corresponding buffers get unmapped. Otherwise  
> > subsequent __block_prepare_write (called because we are retrying the  
> > write) will find the buffers mapped, not call ->get_block, and thus  
> > the page will be backed by already freed blocks leading to  
> > filesystem and data corruption.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
> > ---
> > fs/ext3/inode.c |   18 ++++++++++++++----
> > 1 files changed, 14 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/fs/ext3/inode.c b/fs/ext3/inode.c
> > index 354ed3b..f9d6937 100644
> > --- a/fs/ext3/inode.c
> > +++ b/fs/ext3/inode.c
> > @@ -1151,6 +1151,16 @@ static int  
> > do_journal_get_write_access(handle_t *handle,
> > 	return ext3_journal_get_write_access(handle, bh);
> > }
> >
> > +/*
> > + * Truncate blocks that were not used by write. We have to truncate  
> > the
> > + * pagecache as well so that corresponding buffers get properly  
> > unmapped.
> > + */
> > +static void ext3_truncate_failed_write(struct inode *inode)
> > +{
> > +	truncate_inode_pages(inode->i_mapping, inode->i_size);
> > +	ext3_truncate(inode);
> > +}
> > +
> > static int ext3_write_begin(struct file *file, struct address_space  
> > *mapping,
> > 				loff_t pos, unsigned len, unsigned flags,
> > 				struct page **pagep, void **fsdata)
> > @@ -1209,7 +1219,7 @@ write_begin_failed:
> > 		unlock_page(page);
> > 		page_cache_release(page);
> > 		if (pos + len > inode->i_size)
> > -			ext3_truncate(inode);
> > +			ext3_truncate_failed_write(inode);
> > 	}
> > 	if (ret == -ENOSPC && ext3_should_retry_alloc(inode->i_sb, &retries))
> > 		goto retry;
> > @@ -1304,7 +1314,7 @@ static int ext3_ordered_write_end(struct file  
> > *file,
> > 	page_cache_release(page);
> >
> > 	if (pos + len > inode->i_size)
> > -		ext3_truncate(inode);
> > +		ext3_truncate_failed_write(inode);
> > 	return ret ? ret : copied;
> > }
> >
> > @@ -1330,7 +1340,7 @@ static int ext3_writeback_write_end(struct  
> > file *file,
> > 	page_cache_release(page);
> >
> > 	if (pos + len > inode->i_size)
> > -		ext3_truncate(inode);
> > +		ext3_truncate_failed_write(inode);
> > 	return ret ? ret : copied;
> > }
> >
> > @@ -1383,7 +1393,7 @@ static int ext3_journalled_write_end(struct  
> > file *file,
> > 	page_cache_release(page);
> >
> > 	if (pos + len > inode->i_size)
> > -		ext3_truncate(inode);
> > +		ext3_truncate_failed_write(inode);
> > 	return ret ? ret : copied;
> > }
> >
> > -- 
> 
> Cheers, Andreas
> --
> Andreas Dilger
> Sr. Staff Engineer, Lustre Group
> Sun Microsystems of Canada, Inc.


---
~Randy

Re: [LTP] writev data loss bug in (at least) 2.6.31 and 2.6.32pre8 x86-64

[Subrata Modak]

On Wed, 2009-12-02 at 10:53 -0800, Randy Dunlap wrote: 
> On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:02:04 -0700 Andreas Dilger wrote:
> 
> > On 2009-12-01, at 09:03, Jan Kara wrote:
> > > On Tue 01-12-09 15:35:59, Jan Kara wrote:
> > >> On Tue 01-12-09 12:42:45, Mike Galbraith wrote:
> > >>> On Mon, 2009-11-30 at 19:48 -0500, James Y Knight wrote:
> > >>>> On Nov 30, 2009, at 3:55 PM, James Y Knight wrote:
> > >>>>> This test case is distilled from an actual application which  
> > >>>>> doesn't even intentionally use writev: it just uses C++'s  
> > >>>>> ofstream class to write data to a file. Unfortunately, that  
> > >>>>> class smart and uses writev under the covers. Unfortunately, I  
> > >>>>> guess nobody ever tests linux writev behavior, since it's broken  
> > >>>>> _so_much_of_the_time_. I really am quite astounded to see such a  
> > >>>>> bad track record for such a fundamental core system call....
> > 
> > I suspect an excellent way of exposing problems with the writev()  
> > interface would be to wire it into fsx, which is commonly run as a  
> > stress test for Linux.  I don't know if it would have caught this  
> > case, but it definitely couldn't hurt to get more testing cycles for it.
> 
> Maybe someone from LTP would be interested in adding this test functionality
> to fsx-linux ?
> 

Sure Randy,

We will do it.

Regards--
Subrata

> Source/test program is available at
> http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=125961612418323&w=2
> 
> 
> > >>  Ext4 also has this problem but delayed allocation mitigates the  
> > >> effect to an error in accounting of blocks reserved for delayed  
> > >> allocation and thus under normal circumstances nothing bad happens.
> > 
> > It looks like ext4 might still hit this problem, if delalloc is  
> > disabled.  Could you please submit a similar patch for ext4 also.
> > 
> > >  The patch below fixes the issue for me...
> > >
> > > 									Honza
> > >
> > > From 1b2ad411dd86afbfdb3c5b0f913230e9f1f0b858 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> > > From: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
> > > Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2009 16:53:06 +0100
> > > Subject: [PATCH] ext3: Fix data / filesystem corruption when write  
> > > fails to copy data
> > >
> > > When ext3_write_begin fails after allocating some blocks or  
> > > generic_perform_write fails to copy data to write, we truncate  
> > > blocks already instantiated beyond i_size. Although these blocks  
> > > were never inside i_size, we have to truncate pagecache of these  
> > > blocks so that corresponding buffers get unmapped. Otherwise  
> > > subsequent __block_prepare_write (called because we are retrying the  
> > > write) will find the buffers mapped, not call ->get_block, and thus  
> > > the page will be backed by already freed blocks leading to  
> > > filesystem and data corruption.
> > >
> > > Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
> > > ---
> > > fs/ext3/inode.c |   18 ++++++++++++++----
> > > 1 files changed, 14 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
> > >
> > > diff --git a/fs/ext3/inode.c b/fs/ext3/inode.c
> > > index 354ed3b..f9d6937 100644
> > > --- a/fs/ext3/inode.c
> > > +++ b/fs/ext3/inode.c
> > > @@ -1151,6 +1151,16 @@ static int  
> > > do_journal_get_write_access(handle_t *handle,
> > > 	return ext3_journal_get_write_access(handle, bh);
> > > }
> > >
> > > +/*
> > > + * Truncate blocks that were not used by write. We have to truncate  
> > > the
> > > + * pagecache as well so that corresponding buffers get properly  
> > > unmapped.
> > > + */
> > > +static void ext3_truncate_failed_write(struct inode *inode)
> > > +{
> > > +	truncate_inode_pages(inode->i_mapping, inode->i_size);
> > > +	ext3_truncate(inode);
> > > +}
> > > +
> > > static int ext3_write_begin(struct file *file, struct address_space  
> > > *mapping,
> > > 				loff_t pos, unsigned len, unsigned flags,
> > > 				struct page **pagep, void **fsdata)
> > > @@ -1209,7 +1219,7 @@ write_begin_failed:
> > > 		unlock_page(page);
> > > 		page_cache_release(page);
> > > 		if (pos + len > inode->i_size)
> > > -			ext3_truncate(inode);
> > > +			ext3_truncate_failed_write(inode);
> > > 	}
> > > 	if (ret == -ENOSPC && ext3_should_retry_alloc(inode->i_sb, &retries))
> > > 		goto retry;
> > > @@ -1304,7 +1314,7 @@ static int ext3_ordered_write_end(struct file  
> > > *file,
> > > 	page_cache_release(page);
> > >
> > > 	if (pos + len > inode->i_size)
> > > -		ext3_truncate(inode);
> > > +		ext3_truncate_failed_write(inode);
> > > 	return ret ? ret : copied;
> > > }
> > >
> > > @@ -1330,7 +1340,7 @@ static int ext3_writeback_write_end(struct  
> > > file *file,
> > > 	page_cache_release(page);
> > >
> > > 	if (pos + len > inode->i_size)
> > > -		ext3_truncate(inode);
> > > +		ext3_truncate_failed_write(inode);
> > > 	return ret ? ret : copied;
> > > }
> > >
> > > @@ -1383,7 +1393,7 @@ static int ext3_journalled_write_end(struct  
> > > file *file,
> > > 	page_cache_release(page);
> > >
> > > 	if (pos + len > inode->i_size)
> > > -		ext3_truncate(inode);
> > > +		ext3_truncate_failed_write(inode);
> > > 	return ret ? ret : copied;
> > > }
> > >
> > > -- 
> > 
> > Cheers, Andreas
> > --
> > Andreas Dilger
> > Sr. Staff Engineer, Lustre Group
> > Sun Microsystems of Canada, Inc.
> 
> 
> ---
> ~Randy
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Join us December 9, 2009 for the Red Hat Virtual Experience,
> a free event focused on virtualization and cloud computing. 
> Attend in-depth sessions from your desk. Your couch. Anywhere.
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Re: writev data loss bug in (at least) 2.6.31 and 2.6.32pre8 x86-64

[James Y Knight]

On Dec 1, 2009, at 11:03 AM, Jan Kara wrote:
> On Tue 01-12-09 15:35:59, Jan Kara wrote:
>> On Tue 01-12-09 12:42:45, Mike Galbraith wrote:
>>> I bisected it this morning.  Bisected cleanly to...
>>> 
>>> 9eaaa2d5759837402ec5eee13b2a97921808c3eb is the first bad commit
>>  OK, I've debugged it. This commit is really at fault. The problem is
>> following:
>>  When using writev, the page we copy from is not paged in (while when we
>> use ordinary write, it is paged in). This difference might be worth
>> investigation on its own (as it is likely to heavily impact performance of
>> writev) but is irrelevant for us now - we should handle this without data
>> corruption anyway. Because the source page is not available, we pass 0 as
>> the number of copied bytes to write_end and thus ext3_write_end decides to
>> truncate the file to original size. This is perfectly fine. The problem is
>> that we do this by ext3_truncate() which just frees corresponding block but
>> does not unmap buffers. So we leave mapped buffers beyond i_size (they
>> actually never were inside i_size) but the blocks they are mapped to are
>> already free. The write is then retried (after mapping the page),
>> block_write_begin() sees the buffer is mapped (although it is beyond
>> i_size) and thus it does not call ext3_get_block() anymore. So as a result,
>> data is written to a block that is no longer allocated to the file. Bummer
>> - welcome filesystem corruption.
>>  Ext4 also has this problem but delayed allocation mitigates the effect to
>> an error in accounting of blocks reserved for delayed allocation and thus
>> under normal circumstances nothing bad happens.
>>  The question is how to solve this in the cleanest way. We can call
>> vmtruncate() instead of ext3_truncate() as we used to do but Nick wants to
>> get rid of that (that's why I originally changed the code to what it is
>> now). So probably we could just manually call truncate_pagecache() instead.
>> Nick, I think your truncate calling sequence patch set needs similar fix
>> for all filesystems as well.
>  The patch below fixes the issue for me...

Thank you! I can confirm that the patch fixes the issue in my real application as well.

James

Re: writev data loss bug in (at least) 2.6.31 and 2.6.32pre8 x86-64

[Jan Kara]

On Tue 01-12-09 15:35:59, Jan Kara wrote:
> On Tue 01-12-09 12:42:45, Mike Galbraith wrote:
> > On Mon, 2009-11-30 at 19:48 -0500, James Y Knight wrote:
> > > On Nov 30, 2009, at 3:55 PM, James Y Knight wrote:
> > > 
> > > > This test case fails in 2.6.23-2.6.25, because of the bug fixed in 864f24395c72b6a6c48d13f409f986dc71a5cf4a, and now again in at least 2.6.31 and 2.6.32pre8 because of a *different* bug. This test *does not* fail 2.6.26. I have not tested anything between 2.6.26 and 2.6.31.
> > > > 
> > > > The bug in 2.6.31 is definitely not the same bug as 2.6.23's. This time, the zero'd area of the file doesn't show up immediately upon writing the file. Instead, the kernel waits to mangle the file until it has to flush the buffer to disk. *THEN* it zeros out parts of the file.
> > > > 
> > > > So, after writing out the new file with writev, and checking the md5sum (which is correct), this test case asks the kernel to flush the cache for that file, and then checks the md5sum again. ONLY THEN is the file corrupted. That is, I won't hesitate to say *incredibly evil* behavior: it took me quite some time to figure out WTH was going wrong with my program before determining it was a kernel bug.
> > > > 
> > > > This test case is distilled from an actual application which doesn't even intentionally use writev: it just uses C++'s ofstream class to write data to a file. Unfortunately, that class smart and uses writev under the covers. Unfortunately, I guess nobody ever tests linux writev behavior, since it's broken _so_much_of_the_time_. I really am quite astounded to see such a bad track record for such a fundamental core system call....
> > > > 
> > > > My /tmp is an ext3 filesystem, in case that matters.
> > > 
> > > Further testing shows that the filesystem type *does* matter. The bug does not exhibit when the test is run on ext2, ext4, vfat, btrfs, jfs, or xfs (and probably all the others too). Only, so far as I can determine, on ext3.
> > 
> > I bisected it this morning.  Bisected cleanly to...
> > 
> > 9eaaa2d5759837402ec5eee13b2a97921808c3eb is the first bad commit
>   OK, I've debugged it. This commit is really at fault. The problem is
> following:
>   When using writev, the page we copy from is not paged in (while when we
> use ordinary write, it is paged in). This difference might be worth
> investigation on its own (as it is likely to heavily impact performance of
> writev) but is irrelevant for us now - we should handle this without data
> corruption anyway.
  I've looked into why writev fails reliably the writes. The reason is that
iov_iter_fault_in_readable() faults in only the first IO buffer. Because
this is just 600 bytes big, following iov_iter_copy_from_user_atomic copies
only 600 bytes and block_write_end sets number of copied bytes to 0. Thus
we restart the write and do it one iov per iteration which succeeds. So
everything works as designed only it gets inefficient in this particular
case.

								Honza

Re: writev data loss bug in (at least) 2.6.31 and 2.6.32pre8 x86-64

[Nick Piggin]

On Wed, Dec 02, 2009 at 08:04:26PM +0100, Jan Kara wrote:
> >   When using writev, the page we copy from is not paged in (while when we
> > use ordinary write, it is paged in). This difference might be worth
> > investigation on its own (as it is likely to heavily impact performance of
> > writev) but is irrelevant for us now - we should handle this without data
> > corruption anyway.
>   I've looked into why writev fails reliably the writes. The reason is that
> iov_iter_fault_in_readable() faults in only the first IO buffer. Because
> this is just 600 bytes big, following iov_iter_copy_from_user_atomic copies
> only 600 bytes and block_write_end sets number of copied bytes to 0. Thus
> we restart the write and do it one iov per iteration which succeeds. So
> everything works as designed only it gets inefficient in this particular
> case.

Yep, this would be right. We could actually do more prefaulting; I
think I was being a little over conservative and worried about earlier
pages being unmapped before we were able to consume them... but I
think being too worried about that case is optimizing an unusual case
that is probably performing badly anyway at the expense of more common
patterns.

Anyway, what I was doing to test this code when I wrote it was to
inject random failures into user copy functions. I guess this could
be useful to merge in the error injection framework?

Thanks,
Nick

Re: writev data loss bug in (at least) 2.6.31 and 2.6.32pre8 x86-64

[Jan Kara]

On Thu 03-12-09 06:28:25, Nick Piggin wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 02, 2009 at 08:04:26PM +0100, Jan Kara wrote:
> > >   When using writev, the page we copy from is not paged in (while when we
> > > use ordinary write, it is paged in). This difference might be worth
> > > investigation on its own (as it is likely to heavily impact performance of
> > > writev) but is irrelevant for us now - we should handle this without data
> > > corruption anyway.
> >   I've looked into why writev fails reliably the writes. The reason is that
> > iov_iter_fault_in_readable() faults in only the first IO buffer. Because
> > this is just 600 bytes big, following iov_iter_copy_from_user_atomic copies
> > only 600 bytes and block_write_end sets number of copied bytes to 0. Thus
> > we restart the write and do it one iov per iteration which succeeds. So
> > everything works as designed only it gets inefficient in this particular
> > case.
> Yep, this would be right. We could actually do more prefaulting; I
> think I was being a little over conservative and worried about earlier
> pages being unmapped before we were able to consume them... but I
> think being too worried about that case is optimizing an unusual case
> that is probably performing badly anyway at the expense of more common
> patterns.
  Yeah, IMHO optimal would be to fault in enough buffers so that we can
fill one page (although we may pose some upper bound on the number of pages
we are willing to fault in - like 1 MB of data or so).

> Anyway, what I was doing to test this code when I wrote it was to
> inject random failures into user copy functions. I guess this could
> be useful to merge in the error injection framework?
  Yes, that would be definitely useful. This was exceptionally easy to
track down because it was easily reproducible. But otherwise this path is
almost never taken and bugs in there are hard to debug so it would get more
testing coverage. I've spent like a month debugging a bug in reiserfs
causing data corruption in this path - mainly because it took a few days to
reproduce it and I didn't know what could be possibly triggering it...

								Honza

Re: writev data loss bug in (at least) 2.6.31 and 2.6.32pre8 x86-64

[Nick Piggin]

On Tue, Dec 01, 2009 at 03:35:59PM +0100, Jan Kara wrote:
> On Tue 01-12-09 12:42:45, Mike Galbraith wrote:
> > On Mon, 2009-11-30 at 19:48 -0500, James Y Knight wrote:
> > > On Nov 30, 2009, at 3:55 PM, James Y Knight wrote:
> > > 
> > > > This test case fails in 2.6.23-2.6.25, because of the bug fixed in 864f24395c72b6a6c48d13f409f986dc71a5cf4a, and now again in at least 2.6.31 and 2.6.32pre8 because of a *different* bug. This test *does not* fail 2.6.26. I have not tested anything between 2.6.26 and 2.6.31.
> > > > 
> > > > The bug in 2.6.31 is definitely not the same bug as 2.6.23's. This time, the zero'd area of the file doesn't show up immediately upon writing the file. Instead, the kernel waits to mangle the file until it has to flush the buffer to disk. *THEN* it zeros out parts of the file.
> > > > 
> > > > So, after writing out the new file with writev, and checking the md5sum (which is correct), this test case asks the kernel to flush the cache for that file, and then checks the md5sum again. ONLY THEN is the file corrupted. That is, I won't hesitate to say *incredibly evil* behavior: it took me quite some time to figure out WTH was going wrong with my program before determining it was a kernel bug.
> > > > 
> > > > This test case is distilled from an actual application which doesn't even intentionally use writev: it just uses C++'s ofstream class to write data to a file. Unfortunately, that class smart and uses writev under the covers. Unfortunately, I guess nobody ever tests linux writev behavior, since it's broken _so_much_of_the_time_. I really am quite astounded to see such a bad track record for such a fundamental core system call....
> > > > 
> > > > My /tmp is an ext3 filesystem, in case that matters.
> > > 
> > > Further testing shows that the filesystem type *does* matter. The bug does not exhibit when the test is run on ext2, ext4, vfat, btrfs, jfs, or xfs (and probably all the others too). Only, so far as I can determine, on ext3.
> > 
> > I bisected it this morning.  Bisected cleanly to...
> > 
> > 9eaaa2d5759837402ec5eee13b2a97921808c3eb is the first bad commit
>   OK, I've debugged it. This commit is really at fault. The problem is
> following:
>   When using writev, the page we copy from is not paged in (while when we
> use ordinary write, it is paged in). This difference might be worth
> investigation on its own (as it is likely to heavily impact performance of
> writev) but is irrelevant for us now - we should handle this without data
> corruption anyway. Because the source page is not available, we pass 0 as
> the number of copied bytes to write_end and thus ext3_write_end decides to
> truncate the file to original size. This is perfectly fine. The problem is
> that we do this by ext3_truncate() which just frees corresponding block but
> does not unmap buffers. So we leave mapped buffers beyond i_size (they
> actually never were inside i_size) but the blocks they are mapped to are
> already free. The write is then retried (after mapping the page),
> block_write_begin() sees the buffer is mapped (although it is beyond
> i_size) and thus it does not call ext3_get_block() anymore. So as a result,
> data is written to a block that is no longer allocated to the file. Bummer
> - welcome filesystem corruption.
>   Ext4 also has this problem but delayed allocation mitigates the effect to
> an error in accounting of blocks reserved for delayed allocation and thus
> under normal circumstances nothing bad happens.
>   The question is how to solve this in the cleanest way. We can call
> vmtruncate() instead of ext3_truncate() as we used to do but Nick wants to
> get rid of that (that's why I originally changed the code to what it is
> now). So probably we could just manually call truncate_pagecache() instead.
> Nick, I think your truncate calling sequence patch set needs similar fix
> for all filesystems as well.

Thanks Jan, good analysis and yes I believe I will need to do a similar
fix there.