[PATCH] vfs: Fix data corruption after failed write in __block_write_begin()

[PATCH] vfs: Fix data corruption after failed write in __block_write_begin()

[Jan Kara]

I've got a report of a file corruption from fsxlinux on ext3. The important
operations to the page were:
mapwrite to a hole
partial write to the page
read - found the page zeroed from the end of the normal write

The culprit seems to be that if get_block() fails in __block_write_begin()
(e.g. transient ENOSPC in ext3), the function does ClearPageUptodate(page).
Thus when we retry the write, the logic in __block_write_begin() thinks zeroing
of the page is needed and overwrites old data.  In fact, I don't see why we
should ever need to zero the uptodate bit here - either the page was uptodate
when we entered __block_write_begin() and it should stay so when we leave it,
or it was not uptodate and noone had right to set it uptodate during
__block_write_begin() so it remains !uptodate when we leave as well. So just
remove clearing of the bit.

Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
---
 fs/buffer.c |    4 +---
 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

 I'm definitely looking for a review of this. I wouldn't like to introduce
a new data-corruption-on-error-recovery while fixing one ;)

diff --git a/fs/buffer.c b/fs/buffer.c
index 49c9aad..1a80b04 100644
--- a/fs/buffer.c
+++ b/fs/buffer.c
@@ -1902,10 +1902,8 @@ int __block_write_begin(struct page *page, loff_t pos, unsigned len,
 		if (!buffer_uptodate(*wait_bh))
 			err = -EIO;
 	}
-	if (unlikely(err)) {
+	if (unlikely(err))
 		page_zero_new_buffers(page, from, to);
-		ClearPageUptodate(page);
-	}
 	return err;
 }
 EXPORT_SYMBOL(__block_write_begin);
-- 
1.7.1