On Thursday 26 May 2005 02:05, Hans Reiser <reiser@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Finally, are there still known situations where a corrupt ReiserFS file > > > > > >They were reported years ago on the ReiserFS list. Hans didn't seem > > inclined to fix them as fixing such bugs incurred a performance penalty. > > > >If that policy has changed in the ReiserFS development team then I'll > > write some scripts to randomly corrupt ReiserFS file systems and try to > > reproduce kernel bugs. > > I don't know which bugs you are referring to, and I don't remember > saying what you ascribe to me. Perhaps you refer to my not fscking each > node after it is read into memory before it is used by the filesystem. > I don't think anybody does that, not just us. Some checks are made by > us, but a complete and exhaustive check is not made by anyone that I > know of. We could probably write a node plugin that would crc check > after the node is read from disk. That would be reasonable, and I would > accept a node plugin to do that. I don't know the exact cause of the bug in terms of which part of the code was responsible. I reported a bug where I had a file system which if mounted would have a "find /" operation cause a kernel Oops. As far as I am aware the bug in question was never fixed. It is my belief and the belief of many other people that a corrupted file system should not be able to corrupt kernel memory, not even if the file system is maliciously generated (think about the case of an attacker inserting a CD or USB disk). I am not aware of any other Linux file system for which a corrupted partition can cause kernel memory corruption (please inform me if you know of one). As for the "complete and exhaustive check", maybe this is an advantage for a file system based on Inode tables as the data structures are simpler and easier to check? -- http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/ My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/ Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/postal/ Postal SMTP/POP benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/ My home page