lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2000]   [Dec]   [5]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
Date
From
SubjectRe: test12-pre5
Hi,

On Tue, Dec 05, 2000 at 03:17:07PM -0500, Alexander Viro wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, 5 Dec 2000, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> > And this is not just a "it happens to be like this" kind of thing. It
> > _has_ to be like this, because every time we call clear_inode() we are
> > going to physically free the memory associated with the inode very soon
> > afterwards. Which means that _any_ use of the inode had better be long
> > gone. Dirty buffers included.
>
> Urgh. Linus, AFAICS we _all_ agree on that. The only real question is
> whether we consider calling clear_inode() with droppable dirty buffers
> to be OK. It can't happen on the dispose_list() path and I'ld rather
> see it _not_ happening on the delete_inode() one. It's a policy question,
> not the correctness one.

Right, because if we get this wrong, the kernel won't complain, but
we'll have a rare, impossible-to-diagnose potential data corrupter for
any applications which do recovery on reboot.

If we're not going to change the code, then at the very least a huge
warning comment above clear_inode() is necessary to make it explicit
that you shouldn't ever pass in an inode with dirty buffers unless
nlink==0, and I'd rather see the BUG there instead.

--Stephen
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2005-03-22 12:51    [W:0.155 / U:0.108 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site