[RESEND][PATCH 0/9] Ext3: extended attribute sharing fixes and in-inode EAs

[Andreas Gruenbacher <agruen@suse.de>]

Hello,

it seems this patchset did not make it through to LKML, so I'm trying to resend.

This set of patches contains cleanups and fixes to the mbcache and ext2/ext3 xattr code, and adds completely reworks Alex Tomas's in-inode attribute patch. I did a fair amount of review and testing on all the patches; Andrew Tridgell did some testing as well. As far as I can tell the patches are ready for direct merging. Alternatively the fixes could be merged while the in-inode attribute support could go into -mm; either way won't make much difference for me. Please comment.

In order for the patches to apply, please first revert Alex's in-inode-ea patch. The patch was not ready for merging yet. I could retrofit the rewrite on top of Alex's patch, but this would cause a lot of work, and would benefit the code quality in no way.

Alex's patch was merged in this changeset:
http://linux.bkbits.net:8080/linux-2.6/cset@41db7b23z5xP6bWuxXwEgBu1AxyStQ?nav=index.html|ChangeSet@-4w


All the patches contain decsriptions. The bugfix patches in this set are:

revert-old-ea-in-inode.diff
  A reverse diff of Alex's patch.

mbcache-cleanup.diff
  A small mbcache cleanup.

mbcache-bug.diff
  Convert the mbcache to protect cache entries readers/writer
  style. This fixes an attribute sharing race.

xattr-credits.diff
  Don't use journal_release_buffer in ext3 xattrs; it's unsafe.

ext3_xattr_release_block.diff
  Factor our common xattr code.

remove-XATTR_INDEX_MAX.diff
  Minor cleaup.


The patches for in-inode attribute support are:

xattr-cleanup.diff
  Prepare xattr code for in-inode xattrs.
  
fix-get_inode_loc.diff
  Hide ext3_get_inode_loc in_mem optimization from users;
  the optimization applies differently with in-inode xattrs.

ea-in-inode.diff
  In-inode attribute support. This is the original patch from Alex
  heavily cleaned up.


Please apply the patches in this order:
  revert-old-ea-in-inode.diff
  mbcache-cleanup.diff
  mbcache-bug.diff
  xattr-credits.diff
  ext3_xattr_release_block.diff
  remove-XATTR_INDEX_MAX.diff
  xattr-cleanup.diff
  fix-get_inode_loc.diff
  ea-in-inode.diff


Regards, 
--
Andreas Gruenbacher <agruen@suse.de>
SUSE Labs, SUSE LINUX PRODUCTS GMBH