Re: ext4: journal has aborted

[Eric Whitney <enwlinux@gmail.com>]

* Darrick J. Wong <darrick.wong@oracle.com>:
> On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 06:32:45PM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> > To be clear, what you would need to do is to revert commit
> > 007649375f6af242d5b1df2c15996949714303ba to prevent the fs corruption.
> > Darrick's patch is one that tries to fix the problem addressed by that
> > commit in a different fashion.
> > 
> > Quite frankly, reverting the commit, which is causing real damage, is
> > far more impotrant to me right now than what to do in order allow
> > CONFIG_EXT4FS_DEBUG to work (which is nice, but it's only something
> > that file system developers need, and to be honest I can't remember
> > the last time I've used said config option).  But if we know that
> > Darrick's fix works, I'm willing to push that to Linus at the same
> > time that I push a revert of 007649375f6af242d5b1df2c15996949714303ba
> 
> Reverting the 007649375... patch doesn't seem to create any obvious regressions
> on my test box (though again, I was never able to reproduce it as consistently
> as Eric W.).
> 
> Tossing in the [1] patch also fixes the crash when CONFIG_EXT4_DEBUG=y on
> 3.16-rc4.  I'd say it's safe to send both to Linus and stable.
> 
> If anyone experiences problems that I'm not seeing, please yell loudly and
> soon!
> 

Reverting the suspect patch - 007649375f - on 3.16-rc3 and running on the
Panda yielded 10 successive "successful" generic/068 failures (no block
bitmap trouble on reboot).  So, it looks like that patch is all of it.

Running the same test scenario on Darrick's patch (CONFIG_EXT4FS_DEBUG =>
CONFIG_EXT4_DEBUG) applied to 3.16-rc3 lead to exactly the same result.
No panics, BUGS, or other misbehavior whether generic/068 completed 
successfully or failed (and that test used here simply because it was
convenient) and no trouble on boot, etc.

Let me know if anything else is needed.

Eric

> --D
> 
> [1] http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-ext4/msg43287.html
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > 
> > 						- Ted
> > 
> > On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 11:31:14PM +0200, Matteo Croce wrote:
> > > Will do, thanks!
> > > 
> > > 2014-07-10 22:01 GMT+02:00 Darrick J. Wong <darrick.wong@oracle.com>:
> > > > On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 02:57:48PM -0400, Eric Whitney wrote:
> > > >> * Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>:
> > > >> > On Mon, Jul 07, 2014 at 11:53:10AM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> > > >> > > An update from today's ext4 concall.  Eric Whitney can fairly reliably
> > > >> > > reproduce this on his Panda board with 3.15, and definitely not on
> > > >> > > 3.14.  So at this point there seems to be at least some kind of 3.15
> > > >> > > regression going on here, regardless of whether it's in the eMMC
> > > >> > > driver or the ext4 code.  (It also means that the bug fix I found is
> > > >> > > irrelevant for the purposes of working this issue, since that's a much
> > > >> > > harder to hit, and that bug has been around long before 3.14.)
> > > >> > >
> > > >> > > The problem in terms of narrowing it down any further is that the
> > > >> > > Pandaboard is running into RCU bugs which makes it hard to test the
> > > >> > > early 3.15-rcX kernels.....
> > > >> >
> > > >> > In the hopes of making it easy to bisect, I've created a kernel branch
> > > >> > which starts with 3.14, and then adds on all of the ext4-related
> > > >> > commits since then.   You can find it at:
> > > >> >
> > > >> > git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tytso/ext4.git test-mb_generate_buddy-failure
> > > >> >
> > > >> > https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/tytso/ext4.git/log/?h=test-mb_generate_buddy-failure
> > > >> >
> > > >> > Eric, can you see if you can repro the failure on your Panda Board?
> > > >> > If you can, try doing a bisection search on these series:
> > > >> >
> > > >> > git bisect start
> > > >> > git bisect good v3.14
> > > >> > git bisect bad test-mb_generate_buddy-failure
> > > >> >
> > > >> > Hopefully if it is caused by one of the commits in this series, we'll
> > > >> > be able to pin point it this way.
> > > >>
> > > >> First, the good news (with luck):
> > > >>
> > > >> My testing currently suggests that the patch causing this regression was
> > > >> pulled into 3.15-rc3 -
> > > >>
> > > >> 007649375f6af242d5b1df2c15996949714303ba
> > > >> ext4: initialize multi-block allocator before checking block descriptors
> > > >>
> > > >> Bisection by selectively reverting ext4 commits in -rc3 identified this patch
> > > >> while running on the Pandaboard.  I'm still using generic/068 as my reproducer.
> > > >> It occasionally yields a false negative, but it has passed 10 consecutive
> > > >> trials on my revert/bisect kernel derived from 3.15-rc3.  Given the frequency
> > > >> of false negatives I've seen, I'm reasonably confident in that result.  I'm
> > > >> going to run another series with just that patch reverted on 3.16-rc3.
> > > >>
> > > >> Looking at the patch, the call to ext4_mb_init() was hoisted above the code
> > > >> performing journal recovery in ext4_fill_super().  The regression occurs only
> > > >> after journal recovery on the root filesystem.
> > > >
> > > > Thanks for finding the culprit! :)
> > > >
> > > > Can you apply this patch, build with CONFIG_EXT4FS_DEBUG=y, and see if an
> > > > FS will mount without crashing?  This was the cruddy patch I sent in (and later
> > > > killed) that fixed the crash on mount with EXT4FS_DEBUG in a somewhat silly
> > > > way.  Maybe it's appropriate now.
> > > > http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-ext4/msg43287.html
> > > >
> > > > --D
> > > >
> > > >>
> > > >> Secondly:
> > > >>
> > > >> Thanks for that git tree!  However, I discovered that the same "RCU bug" I
> > > >> thought I was seeing on the Panda was also visible on the x86_64 KVM, and
> > > >> it was actually just RCU noticing stalls.  These also occurred when using
> > > >> your git tree as well as on mainline 3.15-rc1 and 3.15-rc2 and during
> > > >> bisection attempts on 3.15-rc3 within the ext4 patches, and had the effect of
> > > >> masking the regression on the root filesystem.  The test system would lock up
> > > >> completely - no console response - and made it impossible to force the reboot
> > > >> which was required to set up the failure.  Hence the reversion approach, since
> > > >> RCU does not report stalls in 3.15-rc3 (final).
> > > >>
> > > >> Eric
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >> >
> > > >> > Thanks!!
> > > >> >
> > > >> >                                             - Ted
> > > >> --
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> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > -- 
> > > Matteo Croce
> > > OpenWrt Developer
> > > --
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