Re: Duplicate directory entries

[David Chinner <dgc@sgi.com>]

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 11:32:42PM -0400, Jim Paradis wrote:
> David Chinner:
> >On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 03:26:05PM -0400, Jim Paradis wrote:
> >> We recently ran across a situation where we saw two directory entries
> >> that were exactly the same.
> >
> >What kernel version?
> 
> 2.6.18.

No, it was originnally diagnosed on 2.6.5 kernels (sles9) and was fixed around
2.6.17 by the inode i_sem -> i_mutex conversion in mainline before we tracked
it down. The root problem there was a semaphore lock leak in the direct I/O
code causing problems when the inode was recycled and reused as a directory.
The system would panic in the dentry cache, but log recovery would result in
creating duplicate entries in the directory.

I don't think this is your problem unless you've only recently upgraded
from an old kernel and your applications do direct I/O.....

Can you reproduce the problem or provide any information on events
that may have occurred around the time of the duplicates being created?
I suspect that a reproducable test case will be the only way we can track
this down....

Cheers,

Dave.
-- 
Dave Chinner
Principal Engineer
SGI Australian Software Group