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From: Gerald Yang <gerald.yang@canonical.com>
To: tytso@mit.edu, jack@suse.cz
Cc: linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org, gerald.yang.tw@gmail.com
Subject: [PATCH v2] ext4: clear stale xarray tags on folios skipped during writeback
Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2026 00:01:23 +0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260625160127.162272-1-gerald.yang@canonical.com> (raw)

In data=journal mode, the writeback thread can hit the
WARN_ON_ONCE(sb_rdonly(sb)) in ext4_journal_check_start() while the
superblock is being remounted read-only during reboot:

Workqueue: writeback wb_workfn (flush-253:0)
RIP: 0010:ext4_journal_check_start+0x8b/0xd0
Call Trace:
  __ext4_journal_start_sb+0x3c/0x1e0
  mpage_prepare_extent_to_map+0x4af/0x580
  ext4_do_writepages+0x3c0/0x1080
  ext4_writepages+0xc8/0x1a0
  do_writepages+0xc4/0x180
  __writeback_single_inode+0x45/0x2f0
  writeback_sb_inodes+0x26b/0x5d0
  __writeback_inodes_wb+0x54/0x100
  wb_writeback+0x1ac/0x320
  wb_workfn+0x394/0x470

And followed by the warning:
EXT4-fs warning (device vda1): ext4_evict_inode:195: inode #6263:
comm (sd-umount): data will be lost

This issue is not reproduced every time, but frequently.
The reproduction step is to create a VM with 8 CPUs, 16G memory and
setup data=journal:
sudo tune2fs -o journal_data /dev/vda1
Run fio:
rm -f fiotest
fio --name=fiotest --rw=randwrite --bs=4k --runtime=6 --ioengine=libaio
--iodepth=256 --numjobs=8 --filename=fiotest --filesize=30G
--group_reporting
Reboot the VM, and check the console output from:
virsh console testvm

But there is no dirty inode, folio_clear_dirty_for_io clears PG_dirty
but leaves tags PAGECACHE_TAG_DIRTY and PAGECACHE_TAG_TOWRITE set which
are only cleared by __folio_start_writeback.
In data=journal mode, jbd2 checkpoints the journalled data to its final
location and clears its own dirty flag without touching folio PG_dirty
or xarray dirty flags.
The commit f4a2b42e7891 ("ext4: fix stale xarray tags after writeback")
fixes when PG_dirty is still set but there is no dirty page.
Another case is PG_dirty is cleared, but PAGECACHE_TAG_DIRTY and
PAGECACHE_TAG_TOWRITE is still set. In this case, writeback thread
checks clean folio and skips it in mpage_prepare_extent_to_map:
if (!folio_test_dirty(folio) ||
    ...
        folio_unlcok(folio);
	continue

And never reaches ext4_bio_write_folio where the commit f4a2b42e7891
clears the stale xarray tags. Print debug logs after the filesystem
is remounted read-only:
writepages RDONLY nrpages=2048 dirtytag=1 wbtag=0 towrite=1 sync=0
And all folios are actually clean:
folio idx=3 dirty=0 wb=0 checked=0 dirtybuf=0 jbddirty=0 mapped=1
...

We need to clear the xarray stale tags for such clean folios by
cycling them through writeback in the skip path, the same way
f4a2b42e7891 does in ext4_bio_write_folio.

Fixes: dff4ac75eeee ("ext4: move keep_towrite handling to ext4_bio_write_page()")
Signed-off-by: Gerald Yang <gerald.yang@canonical.com>
---
Changes in v2:
Split the top level condition based on Jan's suggestion

 fs/ext4/inode.c | 18 +++++++++++++++---
 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/fs/ext4/inode.c b/fs/ext4/inode.c
index ce99807c5f5b..150f8789f0aa 100644
--- a/fs/ext4/inode.c
+++ b/fs/ext4/inode.c
@@ -2694,13 +2694,25 @@ static int mpage_prepare_extent_to_map(struct mpage_da_data *mpd)
 			 * page is already under writeback and we are not doing
 			 * a data integrity writeback, skip the page
 			 */
-			if (!folio_test_dirty(folio) ||
-			    (folio_test_writeback(folio) &&
-			     (mpd->wbc->sync_mode == WB_SYNC_NONE)) ||
+			if ((folio_test_writeback(folio) &&
+			    mpd->wbc->sync_mode == WB_SYNC_NONE) ||
 			    unlikely(folio->mapping != mapping)) {
 				folio_unlock(folio);
 				continue;
 			}
+			/*
+			 * If the folio is clean, skip writing it back.
+			 * Cycle the folio through the writeback state
+			 * though, to clear stale xarray tags.
+			 */
+			if (!folio_test_dirty(folio)) {
+				if (!folio_test_writeback(folio)) {
+					__folio_start_writeback(folio, false);
+					folio_end_writeback(folio);
+				}
+				folio_unlock(folio);
+				continue;
+			}
 
 			folio_wait_writeback(folio);
 			BUG_ON(folio_test_writeback(folio));
-- 
2.43.0


             reply	other threads:[~2026-06-25 16:02 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 2+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2026-06-25 16:01 Gerald Yang [this message]
2026-06-26 14:07 ` [PATCH v2] ext4: clear stale xarray tags on folios skipped during writeback Jan Kara

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