Re: [PATCH 1/2] xfs: btree block LSN escaping to disk uninitialised

Ben Myers
2013-08-30T18:41:25Z

On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 06:57:53AM +1000, Dave Chinner wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 03:31:09PM -0500, Mark Tinguely wrote:
> > On 08/28/13 06:22, Dave Chinner wrote:
> > >From: Dave Chinner<dchinner@redhat.com>
> > >
> > >When testing LSN ordering code for v5 superblocks, it was discovered
> > >that the the LSN embedded in the generic btree blocks was
> > >occasionally uninitialised. These values didn't get written to disk
> > >by metadata writeback - they got written by previous transactions in
> > >log recovery.
> > >
> > >The issue is here that the when the block is first allocated and
> > >initialised, the LSN field was not initialised - it gets overwritten
> > >before IO is issued on the buffer - but the value that is logged by
> > >transactions that modify the header before it is written to disk
> > >(and initialised) contain garbage. Hence the first recovery of the
> > >buffer will stamp garbage into the LSN field, and that can cause
> > >subsequent transactions to not replay correctly.
> > >
> > >The fix is simply to initialise the bb_lsn field to zero when we
> > >initialise the block for the first time.
> > >
> > >Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner<dchinner@redhat.com>
> > >---
> >
> >
> > This is simple enough that it could have been put into the second patch.
>
> It is simple, but it is a bug fix and not part of the feature being
> added in the second patch. Best practice is to separate out bug
> fixes from features as bug fixes should be standalone commits so
> they can be easily backported if necessary. That's been drilled
> into kernel developers for years by people like akpm, hch and other
> maintainers, so breaking up patches like this should be second
> nature to all kernel developers...

Amen.

Applied these two.