On Apr 16 Stephen C. Tweedie wrote: >On Tue, Apr 16, 2002 at 05:02:55PM +0100, Matt Bernstein wrote: >> At 14:20 +0100 Stephen C. Tweedie wrote: >> >> >More seriously, since 2.4.11, there's a page-cache/buffer-cache >> >aliasing problem which can lead to this being hit in ext3 if you >> >merely read from the buffered block device on which the fs sits. This >> >can happen, for example, if you dump(8) a live filesystem. I've got a >> >fix pending for the ext3 side of that problem, and have posted the >> >core VFS fix to l-k. >> >> *blush* We dump our filesystems live. I bet we're not the only ones. > >Indeed, it's common enough, but it's unsafe for various reasons. With >LVM, it should work a bit better. > >At least with the current patches, it shouldn't oops any more. Now our student fileserver has hit exactly the same bug :( This is running 2.4.18, so the question is.. what are the "current patches"? I'm looking for something stable, so I was shying away from -pre kernels on this particular box. I'd really appreciate a link on the ext3 web page to a patch versus the most recent full 2.4 kernel for critical bugs such as this, or a recommendation of a good -pre kernel. Sorry to be a pain! Matt