ext4: Fix race in ext4_inode_info.i_cached_extent
authorTheodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
Tue, 2 Jun 2009 12:09:36 +0000 (08:09 -0400)
committerGreg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
Fri, 12 Jun 2009 03:01:59 +0000 (20:01 -0700)
commit02c13375d3dff04bc17724d3983e47a2a36be14c
tree12d8585527e7d8eafeb249e6203369ed94f97678
parentef3740934e85572dce2e20cecea3341fd43647e0
ext4: Fix race in ext4_inode_info.i_cached_extent

(cherry picked from commit 2ec0ae3acec47f628179ee95fe2c4da01b5e9fc4)

If two CPU's simultaneously call ext4_ext_get_blocks() at the same
time, there is nothing protecting the i_cached_extent structure from
being used and updated at the same time.  This could potentially cause
the wrong location on disk to be read or written to, including
potentially causing the corruption of the block group descriptors
and/or inode table.

This bug has been in the ext4 code since almost the very beginning of
ext4's development.  Fortunately once the data is stored in the page
cache cache, ext4_get_blocks() doesn't need to be called, so trying to
replicate this problem to the point where we could identify its root
cause was *extremely* difficult.  Many thanks to Kevin Shanahan for
working over several months to be able to reproduce this easily so we
could finally nail down the cause of the corruption.

Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
Reviewed-by: "Aneesh Kumar K.V" <aneesh.kumar@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
fs/ext4/extents.c