linux-fsdevel.vger.kernel.org archive mirror
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Dave Kleikamp <shaggy@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
To: Jens Nie <JNie@RosenInspection.net>
Cc: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Possible bug in ext3 filesystem
Date: Thu, 04 Jan 2007 13:38:14 -0600	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1167939495.15090.30.camel@kleikamp.austin.ibm.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <6B225A8E1148A14688736567B978603001A6CB9B@lin0017.roseninspection.net>

On Thu, 2007-01-04 at 12:34 +0100, Jens Nie wrote:
> Hello List.
> 
> I think i found a bug in the ext3 filesystem. It deals with 
> dereferencing symlinks. I have installed a fresh openSUSE 10.2 on an
> ext3 filesystem.
> After that i wanted to include some selfmade LaTeX-classes by creating 
> a symlink within /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex to the directory 
> containing the class. texhash lists the new link within 
> /usr/share/texmf/ls-R. However the complete content of the classes 
> directory is missing. File and directory permissions are OK. I suspect 
> that the dereferencing of symlinks to the target directory does not 
> work on ext3. To check that i tested an older SuSE Installation with 
> reiserfs, which works as expected. Another test i made was creating an 
> ext3 fs, xfs and reiserfs on a loopback device. Within this test 
> filesystem that i mounted temporarily to /mnt i created a symlink to 
> /usr. Issuing the command ls -LRa, which is exactly what texhash is 
> using and should dereference the link to /usr did not recursively list 
> the contents of /usr on the ext3 filesystem whereas it did on the
> reiserfs and xfs.

I did a little playing around with strace and I suspect that it may have
something to do with ext3 returning DT_LNK to the filldir routine (which
gets returned through getdents64).  A lot of file systems always return
DT_UNKNOWN.  Maybe ls is handling the DT_UNKNOWN case alright, but not
the DT_LNK case.  (When DT_UNKNOWN is returned, ls calls stat64() which
would identify the symlink as a directory rather than a symlink.)

> The test system was a dual opteron (x86_64) as well as a mobile Athlon
> (i386) system running openSUSE 10.2.
> 
> I reported this on the opensuse mailing list first. Someone there was
> kind enough to point me directly to this list.
> 
> Some more information which might be useful for people not being
> directly familiar with opensuse:
> 
> - kernel 2.6.18.2 possibly with typical SuSE changes (SuSE release is
> 2.6.18.2-34-default)
> - e2fsprogs 1.39
> - coreutils 6.4
> 
> Any ideas? Can anyone confirm that this is a bug? Any solutions?
> 
> Best Regards
> 
> Jens
-- 
David Kleikamp
IBM Linux Technology Center


  parent reply	other threads:[~2007-01-04 19:38 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2007-01-04 11:34 Possible bug in ext3 filesystem Jens Nie
2007-01-04 17:47 ` Theodore Tso
2007-01-04 19:38 ` Dave Kleikamp [this message]
2007-01-04 21:39   ` Jan Blunck

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=1167939495.15090.30.camel@kleikamp.austin.ibm.com \
    --to=shaggy@linux.vnet.ibm.com \
    --cc=JNie@RosenInspection.net \
    --cc=linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).