[PATCH 6.6 049/567] ext4: dont zero the entire extent if EXT4_EXT_DATA_PARTIAL_VALID1

Greg Kroah-Hartman
2026-03-23T14:54:32Z

6.6-stable review patch. If anyone has any objections, please let me know.

------------------

From: Zhang Yi <yi.zhang@huawei.com>

[ Upstream commit 1bf6974822d1dba86cf11b5f05498581cf3488a2 ]

When allocating initialized blocks from a large unwritten extent, or
when splitting an unwritten extent during end I/O and converting it to
initialized, there is currently a potential issue of stale data if the
extent needs to be split in the middle.

0 A B N
[UUUUUUUUUUUU] U: unwritten extent
[--DDDDDDDD--] D: valid data
|<- ->| ----> this range needs to be initialized

ext4_split_extent() first try to split this extent at B with
EXT4_EXT_DATA_ENTIRE_VALID1 and EXT4_EXT_MAY_ZEROOUT flag set, but
ext4_split_extent_at() failed to split this extent due to temporary lack
of space. It zeroout B to N and mark the entire extent from 0 to N
as written.

0 A B N
[WWWWWWWWWWWW] W: written extent
[SSDDDDDDDDZZ] Z: zeroed, S: stale data

ext4_split_extent() then try to split this extent at A with
EXT4_EXT_DATA_VALID2 flag set. This time, it split successfully and left
a stale written extent from 0 to A.

0 A B N
[WW|WWWWWWWWWW]
[SS|DDDDDDDDZZ]

Fix this by pass EXT4_EXT_DATA_PARTIAL_VALID1 to ext4_split_extent_at()
when splitting at B, don't convert the entire extent to written and left
it as unwritten after zeroing out B to N. The remaining work is just
like the standard two-part split. ext4_split_extent() will pass the
EXT4_EXT_DATA_VALID2 flag when it calls ext4_split_extent_at() for the
second time, allowing it to properly handle the split. If the split is
successful, it will keep extent from 0 to A as unwritten.

Signed-off-by: Zhang Yi <yi.zhang@huawei.com>
Reviewed-by: Ojaswin Mujoo <ojaswin@linux.ibm.com>
Reviewed-by: Baokun Li <libaokun1@huawei.com>
Cc: stable@kernel.org
Message-ID: <20251129103247.686136-3-yi.zhang@huaweicloud.com>
Signed-off-by: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>
---
fs/ext4/extents.c | 13 ++++++++++++-
1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/fs/ext4/extents.c b/fs/ext4/extents.c
index 18520281e1b5f..fd9517dbf633e 100644
--- a/fs/ext4/extents.c
+++ b/fs/ext4/extents.c
@@ -3296,6 +3296,15 @@ static struct ext4_ext_path *ext4_split_extent_at(handle_t *handle,
}

if (!err) {
+ /*
+ * The first half contains partially valid data, the
+ * splitting of this extent has not been completed, fix
+ * extent length and ext4_split_extent() split will the
+ * first half again.
+ */
+ if (split_flag & EXT4_EXT_DATA_PARTIAL_VALID1)
+ goto fix_extent_len;
+
/* update the extent length and mark as initialized */
ex->ee_len = cpu_to_le16(ee_len);
ext4_ext_try_to_merge(handle, inode, path, ex);
@@ -3371,7 +3380,9 @@ static int ext4_split_extent(handle_t *handle,
split_flag1 |= EXT4_EXT_MARK_UNWRIT1 |
EXT4_EXT_MARK_UNWRIT2;
if (split_flag & EXT4_EXT_DATA_VALID2)
- split_flag1 |= EXT4_EXT_DATA_ENTIRE_VALID1;
+ split_flag1 |= map->m_lblk > ee_block ?
+ EXT4_EXT_DATA_PARTIAL_VALID1 :
+ EXT4_EXT_DATA_ENTIRE_VALID1;
path = ext4_split_extent_at(handle, inode, path,
map->m_lblk + map->m_len, split_flag1, flags1);
if (IS_ERR(path)) {
--
2.51.0