Re: Oopsing cryptoapi (or loop device?) on 2.6.*

[Jari Ruusu <jariruusu@users.sourceforge.net>]

Jan Rychter wrote:
> FWIW, I've just tried loop-AES with 2.4.24, after using cryptoapi for a
> number of years. My machine froze dead in the midst of copying 2.8GB of
> data onto my file-backed reiserfs encrypted loopback mount.
> 
> Since the system didn't ever freeze on me before and since I've had zero
> problems with cryptoapi, I attribute the freeze to loop-AES.
> 
> Yes, I know this isn't a good bugreport...

Is there any particular reason why you insist on using file backed loops?

File backed loops have hard to fix re-entry problem: GFP_NOFS memory
allocations that cause dirty pages to written out to file backed loop, will
have to re-enter the file system anyway to complete the write. This causes
deadlocks. Same deadlocks are there in mainline loop+cryptoloop combo.

This is one of the reasons why this is in loop-AES README: "If you can
choose between device backed and file backed, choose device backed even if
it means that you have to re-partition your disks."

-- 
Jari Ruusu  1024R/3A220F51 5B 4B F9 BB D3 3F 52 E9  DB 1D EB E3 24 0E A9 DD