[PATCH v2 1/1] jbd2: gracefully abort on checkpointing state corruptions
From: Milos Nikic
Date: Wed Mar 11 2026 - 00:16:05 EST
This patch targets two internal state machine invariants in checkpoint.c
residing inside functions that natively return integer error codes.
- In jbd2_cleanup_journal_tail(): A blocknr of 0 indicates a severely
corrupted journal superblock. Replaced the J_ASSERT with a WARN_ON_ONCE
and a graceful journal abort, returning -EFSCORRUPTED.
- In jbd2_log_do_checkpoint(): Replaced the J_ASSERT_BH checking for
an unexpected buffer_jwrite state. If the warning triggers, we
explicitly drop the just-taken get_bh() reference and call __flush_batch()
to safely clean up any previously queued buffers in the j_chkpt_bhs array,
preventing a memory leak before returning -EFSCORRUPTED.
Signed-off-by: Milos Nikic <nikic.milos@xxxxxxxxx>
Reviewed-by: Andreas Dilger <adilger@xxxxxxxxx>
Reviewed-by: Zhang Yi <yi.zhang@xxxxxxxxxx>
Reviewed-by: Baokun Li <libaokun@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
Changes in v2:
Replaced the -EUCLEAN error code with -EFSCORRUPTED to better align with ext4/jbd2 semantics for on-disk metadata inconsistencies (per Baokun's review).
Reordered the error path in jbd2_log_do_checkpoint() so that jbd2_journal_abort() is called after __flush_batch(). This ensures cleanly batched buffers are logically flushed before the journal kill switch is flipped.
Collected Reviewed-by tags from Andreas Dilger, Zhang Yi, and Baokun Li.
Changes in v1:
Initial implementation converting J_ASSERTs in jbd2_cleanup_journal_tail() and jbd2_log_do_checkpoint() to WARN_ON_ONCE and graceful journal aborts.
fs/jbd2/checkpoint.c | 15 +++++++++++++--
1 file changed, 13 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/fs/jbd2/checkpoint.c b/fs/jbd2/checkpoint.c
index de89c5bef607..1508e2f54462 100644
--- a/fs/jbd2/checkpoint.c
+++ b/fs/jbd2/checkpoint.c
@@ -267,7 +267,15 @@ int jbd2_log_do_checkpoint(journal_t *journal)
*/
BUFFER_TRACE(bh, "queue");
get_bh(bh);
- J_ASSERT_BH(bh, !buffer_jwrite(bh));
+ if (WARN_ON_ONCE(buffer_jwrite(bh))) {
+ put_bh(bh); /* drop the ref we just took */
+ spin_unlock(&journal->j_list_lock);
+ /* Clean up any previously batched buffers */
+ if (batch_count)
+ __flush_batch(journal, &batch_count);
+ jbd2_journal_abort(journal, -EFSCORRUPTED);
+ return -EFSCORRUPTED;
+ }
journal->j_chkpt_bhs[batch_count++] = bh;
transaction->t_chp_stats.cs_written++;
transaction->t_checkpoint_list = jh->b_cpnext;
@@ -325,7 +333,10 @@ int jbd2_cleanup_journal_tail(journal_t *journal)
if (!jbd2_journal_get_log_tail(journal, &first_tid, &blocknr))
return 1;
- J_ASSERT(blocknr != 0);
+ if (WARN_ON_ONCE(blocknr == 0)) {
+ jbd2_journal_abort(journal, -EFSCORRUPTED);
+ return -EFSCORRUPTED;
+ }
/*
* We need to make sure that any blocks that were recently written out
--
2.53.0