Re: [PATCH 00/17] fs, btrfs refcount conversions
From: David Sterba
Date: Thu Mar 09 2017 - 11:25:35 EST
On Fri, Mar 03, 2017 at 10:55:09AM +0200, Elena Reshetova wrote:
> Now when new refcount_t type and API are finally merged
> (see include/linux/refcount.h), the following
> patches convert various refcounters in the btrfs filesystem from atomic_t
> to refcount_t. By doing this we prevent intentional or accidental
> underflows or overflows that can led to use-after-free vulnerabilities.
>
> The below patches are fully independent and can be cherry-picked separately.
> Since we convert all kernel subsystems in the same fashion, resulting
> in about 300 patches, we have to group them for sending at least in some
> fashion to be manageable. Please excuse the long cc list.
Thanks, the patchset looks good to me, I'm going to add it to the 4.12 queue.
> These patches have been tested with xfstests by running btrfs-related tests.
> btrfs debug was enabled, warns on refcount errors, too. No output related to
> refcount errors produced. However, the following errors were during the run:
> * tests btrfs/078, btrfs/114, btrfs/115, no errors anywhere in dmesg, but
> process hangs. They all seem to be around qgroup, sometimes error visible
> such as qgroup scan failed -4 before it blocks, but not always.
> * test btrfs/104 dmesg has additional error output:
> BTRFS warning (device vdc): qgroup 258 reserved space underflow, have: 0,
> to free: 4096
> I tried looking at the code on what causes the failure, but could not figure
> it out. It doesn't seem to be related to any refcount changes at least IMO.
>
> The above test failures are hard for me to understand and interpreted, but
> they don't seem to relate to refcount conversions.
I don't think they're related to the refcount updates so we'll address
them.