Re: [PATCH v2] ext4: fix a NULL pointer when validating an inode bitmap

[Baokun Li]

On 2022/11/29 6:28, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 08, 2022 at 02:06:29PM +0000, Luís Henriques wrote:
> > > What makes you believe that?  Look at how s_group_info is initialized
> > > in ext4_mb_alloc_groupinfo() in fs/ext4/mballoc.c.  It's pretty
> > > careful to make sure this is not the case.
> > Right.  I may be missing something, but I don't think we get that far.
> > __ext4_fill_super() will first call ext4_setup_system_zone() (which is
> > where this bug occurs) and only after that ext4_mb_init() will be invoked
> > (which is where ext4_mb_alloc_groupinfo() will eventually be called).
> I finally got around to taking a closer look at this, and I have a
> much better understandign of what is going on.  For more details, and
> a suggested fix, please see:
>
>       https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=216541#c1
>
> 						- Ted
Hi Theodore,

In my opinion, the s_journal_inum should not be modified when the file 
system is
mounted, especially after we have successfully loaded and replayed the 
journal with
the current s_journal_inum. Even if the s_journal_inumon the disk is 
modified, we should
use the current one. This is how journal_devnum is handled in 
ext4_load_journal():

         if (!really_read_only && journal_devnum &&
             journal_devnum != le32_to_cpu(es->s_journal_dev)) {
                 es->s_journal_dev = cpu_to_le32(journal_devnum);

                 /* Make sure we flush the recovery flag to disk. */
                 ext4_commit_super(sb);
         }

We can avoid this problem by adding a similar check for journal_inum in 
ext4_load_journal().

--
With Best Regards,
Baokun Li