Re: [RFC][PATCH] set_page_buffer_dirty should skip unmapped buffers

From: Badari Pulavarty
Date: Fri Sep 08 2006 - 00:31:08 EST


Jan Kara wrote:
Ugh! Are you sure? For this path the buffer must be attached (only) to
the running transaction. But then how the commit code comes to it?
Somebody would have to even manage to refile the buffer from the
committing transaction to the running one while the buffer is in wbuf[].
Could you check whether someone does __journal_refile_buffer() on your
marked buffers, please? Or whether we move buffer to BJ_Locked list in
the write_out_data: loop? Thanks.


I added more debug in __journal_refile_buffer() to see if the marked
buffers are getting refiled. I am able to reproduce the problem,
but I don't see any debug including my original prints. (It looks as if none of my debug code exists) - its really confusing.

I will keep looking and get back to you.
I've been looking more at the code and I have revived my patch fixing
this part of the code. I've mildly tested the patch. Could you also give
it a try? Thanks.

Honza
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Original commit code assumes, that when a buffer on BJ_SyncData list is locked,
it is being written to disk. But this is not true and hence it can lead to a
potential data loss on crash. Also the code didn't count with the fact that
journal_dirty_data() can steal buffers from committing transaction and hence
could write buffers that no longer belong to the committing transaction.
Finally it could possibly happen that we tried writing out one buffer several
times.

The patch below tries to solve these problems by a complete rewrite of the data
commit code. We go through buffers on t_sync_datalist, lock buffers needing
write out and store them in an array. Buffers are also immediately refiled to
BJ_Locked list or unfiled (if the write out is completed). When the array is
full or we have to block on buffer lock, we submit all accumulated buffers for
IO.

Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx>

I have been running 4+ hours with this patch and seems to work fine. I haven't hit any
assert yet :)

I will let it run till tomorrow. I will let you know, how it goes.

Thanks,
Badari

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