[PATCH 1/2] writeback: avoid double-writing the inode on a lazytime expiration

Theodore Ts'o
2020-03-20T02:53:18Z

In the case that an inode has dirty timestamp for longer than the
lazytime expiration timeout (or if all such inodes are being flushed
out due to a sync or syncfs system call), we need to inform the file
system that the inode is dirty so that the inode's timestamps can be
copied out to the on-disk data structures. That's because if the file
system supports lazytime, it will have ignored the dirty_inode(inode,
I_DIRTY_TIME) notification when the timestamp was modified in memory.q

Previously, this was accomplished by calling mark_inode_dirty_sync(),
but that has the unfortunate side effect of also putting the inode the
writeback list, and that's not necessary in this case, since we will
immediately call write_inode() afterwards.

Eric Biggers noticed that this was causing problems for fscrypt after
the key was removed[1].

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200306004555.GB225345@gmail.com

Reported-by: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
---
fs/fs-writeback.c | 5 +++--
1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/fs/fs-writeback.c b/fs/fs-writeback.c
index 76ac9c7d32ec..867454997c9d 100644
--- a/fs/fs-writeback.c
+++ b/fs/fs-writeback.c
@@ -1504,8 +1504,9 @@ __writeback_single_inode(struct inode *inode, struct writeback_control *wbc)

spin_unlock(&inode->i_lock);

- if (dirty & I_DIRTY_TIME)
- mark_inode_dirty_sync(inode);
+ /* This was a lazytime expiration; we need to tell the file system */
+ if (dirty & I_DIRTY_TIME_EXPIRED && inode->i_sb->s_op->dirty_inode)
+ inode->i_sb->s_op->dirty_inode(inode, I_DIRTY_SYNC);
/* Don't write the inode if only I_DIRTY_PAGES was set */
if (dirty & ~I_DIRTY_PAGES) {
int err = write_inode(inode, wbc);
--
2.24.1