Re: Fw: Re: Process hangs copying large file to cifs filesystem

[Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>]

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> wrote:
>
> 
> 
> On Fri, 25 Jun 2004, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > 
> > Linus, why does __mark_inode_dirty() skip unhashed inodes?
> 
> Hah. I wouldn't remember for the life of me. There could be multiple 
> reasons, all of which I've forgotten:
> 
>  - ramfs deadlocks on "sync()", since it can't write out inodes

hm.  ramfs oopses on null ->writepage without the check.  I'll fix that up.

>  - stale and bad inodes get unhashed, and end up being unwritable.

Maybe we should check inode sanity in the writing path, rather than the
dirtying path.  We already check is_bad_inode() in write_inode().

>  - totally stale reason that doesn't exist any more.
> 
> I suspect #3 migth well be true, but it's a scary change to try.

It is indeed scary, yes.  I think the path of least resistance here is for
cifs to start hashing dem inodes.