testing result of loop-aio patchset on ext3

Rui Xiang
2014-07-14T09:35:01Z

Hi Dave,

We export a container image file as a block device via loop device, but we
found it's very easy that the container rootfs gets corrupted due to power
loss.

Your early version of loop-aio patchset said the patchset can make loop
mounted filesystems recoverable(lkml.org/lkml/2012/3/30/317), but we found
it doesn't help.

Both the guest fs and host fs are ext3.

The loop-aio patchset is from:
git://github.com/kleikamp/linux-shaggy.git aio_loop

Steps:
1. dd a 10G image, mkfs.ext3,
# dd if=/dev/zero of=./raw_image bs=1M count=10000
# echo y | mkfs.ext3 raw_image

2. losetup a loop device, mount at ./test_dir
# losetup /dev/loop1 raw_image
# mount /dev/loop1 ./test_dir

3. copy fs_mark into test_dir and run
# ./fs_mark -d ./tmp/ -s 102400000 -n 80

4. during runing fs_mark, make systerm reboot indirectly.
# echo b > /proc/sysrq-trigger

After systerm booted up, sometimes fsck reported raw_image fs has been damaged.

# fsck.ext3 -n raw_image
e2fsck 1.41.9 (22-Aug-2009)
Warning: skipping journal recovery because doing a read-only filesystem check.
raw_image contains a file system with errors, check forced.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
Free blocks count wrong (2481348, counted=2480577).
Fix? no
Free inodes count wrong (640837, counted=640835).
Fix? no
raw_image: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors **********
raw_image: 11/640848 files (0.0% non-contiguous), 78652/2560000 blocks

With a specific script, I can almost 100% reproduce this issue.

And it seems the corruption can only happen when reboot happens at the
time loop is calling vfs_fsync().

Do you have any idea why the loop-aio patchset doesn't help?

Thanks.