[PATCH] ext4 filesystem corruption

[Leann Ogasawara]

SRU Justification:

Impact: As mentioned by Ted Tso (see link below) there has been a data corruption issue fixed in ext4 after 2.6.28.y was stopped.

Fix: A cherry pick from upstream from Ted's repo.

Testcase: unfortunately not clearly stated

----

I'm opening a separate report to track the following issue mentioned from Ted Ts'o

https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/330824/comments/191

"P.S. There is a known ext4 file system corruption bug which is fixed in the 2.6.30 mainline kernel and in 2.6.29.5. It was found after the stable kernel series stopped updating for 2.6.28, but I do carry a fix for it in my for-stable-2.6.28 branch of the ext4 git tree, located here:

        git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tytso/ext4.git for-stable-2.6.28
        http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/tytso/ext4.git;a=shortlog;h=for-stable-2.6.28

(This is where it's handy to have a file system specialist working at the distribution; when I found the problem, I was able to contact Eric and he made sure the patch was quickly dropped into the F11 kernel.)"

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

This should be resolved for Karmic but I'm opening a Jaunty nomination for the kernel team to consider a stable release update for Jaunty.

[Stefan Bader (smb)]

I guess he means that one...

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/tytso/ext4.git;a=commitdiff;h=16cb5dd9f53e569130584696909d423b6fe38c1e

[Stefan Bader (smb)]

Oops, wrong task

[Richard Hansen (rhansen)]

According to <http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/4/30/545>, there will not be any more 2.6.28 stable releases. However, there have been three 2.6.27 releases since then, the latest of which includes this patch along with a bunch of other ext4 patches. Would it be worthwhile to ask upstream (Greg KH?) to cherrypick the ext4 patches into a new 2.6.28.11 release so that you don't have to maintain this patch locally?

Also, could this be related to the ext4 filesystem corruption reported in bug #346691? I see that this patch fixes a longstanding ext4 bug, whereas bug #346691 is relatively new; perhaps a recent kernel change causes this bug to be tickled much more frequently?

[Stefan Bader (smb)]

As these locking issues often are sensitive to timing, it could well be that other changes had some influence. The problem with the stable kernels is that, after the experience with 2.6.27.y which received a huge amount of updates and sometimes caused regressions, we now went back to cherry-pick patches to reported problems for which we can get help in testing. As those patches are upstream and also kept by Ted, I don't think it will help that much if Greg would maintain a 2.6.28.11. But I should make sure we better sync with Ted.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Accepted linux into jaunty-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

[HonoredMule (honoredmule)]

Could someone please /finish/ the documentation in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed? The blurb in italics asking how to actually accomplish more than seeing a package list has been there for ages, and that's about as far as I can get as well. Aptitude does nothing because it erroneously believes that the newer version of linux-server is already installed, and I can't find any documentation that describes how to force aptitude to actually do something.

Meanwhile, I've got a computing cluster that's regularly vomiting on its storage and threatening to sabotage 2 months of administrative work. Good thing I have backups...

[Stefan Bader (smb)]

This still seems lacking a definite feedback. The supposed fix is in the proposed kernel package which can be also found via the following link https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty/+source/linux/2.6.28-15.48 (then following the links to the builds to the right). It would be great if someone could verify, that this kernel solves the problem.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package linux - 2.6.28-15.48

---------------
linux (2.6.28-15.48) jaunty-proposed; urgency=low

  [ Andy Whitcroft ]

  * SAUCE: pnp: add PNP resource range checking function
    - LP: #349314
  * SAUCE: i915: enable MCHBAR if needed
    - LP: #349314

  [ Brad Figg ]

  * SAUCE: Add information to recognize Toshiba Satellite Pro M10 Alps
    Touchpad
    - LP: #330885

  [ Colin Ian King ]

  * Input: atkbd - add forced release keys quirk for Samsung Q45
    - LP: #347623

  [ Manoj Iyer ]

  * SAUCE: Added quirk to enable the installer to recognize NetXen NIC.
    - LP: #389603

  [ Stefan Bader ]

  * SAUCE: input: Blacklist digitizers from joydev.c
    - LP: #300143

  [ Tim Gardner ]

  * Revert "SAUCE: md: wait for possible pending deletes after stopping an
    array"
    - LP: #334994

  [ Upstream Kernel Changes ]

  * bonding: Fix updating of speed/duplex changes
    - LP: #371651
  * net: fix sctp breakage
    - LP: #371651
  * ipv6: don't use tw net when accounting for recycled tw
    - LP: #371651
  * ipv6: Plug sk_buff leak in ipv6_rcv (net/ipv6/ip6_input.c)
    - LP: #371651
  * netfilter: nf_conntrack_tcp: fix unaligned memory access in tcp_sack
    - LP: #371651
  * xfrm: spin_lock() should be spin_unlock() in xfrm_state.c
    - LP: #371651
  * bridge: bad error handling when adding invalid ether address
    - LP: #371651
  * bas_gigaset: correctly allocate USB interrupt transfer buffer
    - LP: #371651
  * USB: EHCI: add software retry for transaction errors
    - LP: #371651
  * USB: fix USB_STORAGE_CYPRESS_ATACB
    - LP: #371651
  * USB: usb-storage: increase max_sectors for tape drives
    - LP: #371651
  * USB: gadget: fix rndis regression
    - LP: #371651
  * USB: add quirk to avoid config and interface strings
    - LP: #371651
  * cifs: fix buffer format byte on NT Rename/hardlink
    - LP: #371651
  * b43: fix b43_plcp_get_bitrate_idx_ofdm return type
    - LP: #371651
  * Add a missing unlock_kernel() in raw_open()
    - LP: #371651
  * x86, PAT, PCI: Change vma prot in pci_mmap to reflect inherited prot
    - LP: #371651
  * security/smack: fix oops when setting a size 0 SMACK64 xattr
    - LP: #371651
  * x86, setup: mark %esi as clobbered in E820 BIOS call
    - LP: #371651
  * dock: fix dereference after kfree()
    - LP: #371651
  * mm: define a UNIQUE value for AS_UNEVICTABLE flag
    - LP: #371651
  * mm: do_xip_mapping_read: fix length calculation
    - LP: #371651
  * vfs: skip I_CLEAR state inodes
    - LP: #371651
  * net/netrom: Fix socket locking
    - LP: #371651
  * kprobes: Fix locking imbalance in kretprobes
    - LP: #371651
  * netfilter: {ip, ip6, arp}_tables: fix incorrect loop detection
    - LP: #371651
  * ALSA: hda - add missing comma in ad1884_slave_vols
    - LP: #371651
  * SCSI: libiscsi: fix iscsi pool error path
    - LP: #371651
  * SCSI: libiscsi: fix iscsi pool error path again
    - LP: #371651
  * posixtimers, sched: Fix posix clock monotonicity
    - LP: #371651
  * sched: do not count frozen tasks toward load
    - LP: #371651
  * spi: spi_write_then_read() bugfixes
    - LP: #371651
  * powerpc: Fix data-corrupting bug in __futex_atomic_op
    - LP...