Re: jbd2-abort-instead-of-waiting-for-nonexistent-transactions.patch

["Duane Griffin" <duaneg@dghda.com>]

2008/9/22 Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>:
> Guys, I have a note here that this might be needed in 2.6.27.
>
> I also have a note that Stephen had issues with it, but I
> don't recall what they were.

Stephen suggested that it would be better to sanity check the journal
start/end pointers on mount, rather than catching the error later like
this. I never quite convinced myself I'd worked out the right way to
do that, sorry. Perhaps someone would like to confirm (or otherwise)
whether or not the following is correct:

In journal_reset (?) check that:

journal->j_first == 1 (this seems to be the only valid value)

and

journal->j_last >= JFS_MIN_JOURNAL_BLOCKS

Additionally, it should be possible to check the journal->j_last more
precisely. For internal journals it seems straight-forward, we can
just check that journal->j_last == inode->i_size >>
inode->i_sb->s_blocksize_bits. For external journals we'd need to load
the device's superblock and check journal->j_last == s_blocks_count.

> Can we get this sorted out please?

If the above is confirmed I'll send a patch to that effect for jdb,
jdb2 and for e2fsprogs (fsck doesn't check j_first/j_last either).

Regardless, I think the original patch may be a good idea. It improves
robustness and matches the other locations where we call
jbd2_log_do_checkpoint. They are all in loops that test that
journal->j_checkpoint_transactions != NULL.

Cheers,
Duane.

-- 
"I never could learn to drink that blood and call it wine" - Bob Dylan