Early alpha processors cannot write a single byte or word; they read 8 bytes, modify the value in registers and write back 8 bytes. The type blk_status_t is defined as one byte, it is often written asynchronously by I/O completion routines, this asynchronous modification can corrupt content of nearby bytes if these nearby bytes can be written simultaneously by another CPU. - one example of such corruption is the structure dm_io where "blk_status_t status" is written by an asynchronous completion routine and "atomic_t io_count" is modified synchronously - another example is the structure dm_buffer where "unsigned hold_count" is modified synchronously from process context and "blk_status_t write_error" is modified asynchronously from bio completion routine This patch fixes the bug by changing the type blk_status_t to 32 bits if we are on Alpha and if we are compiling for a processor that doesn't have the byte-word-extension. Signed-off-by: Mikulas Patocka <mpatocka@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx # 4.13+ --- include/linux/blk_types.h | 5 +++++ 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+) Index: linux-2.6/include/linux/blk_types.h =================================================================== --- linux-2.6.orig/include/linux/blk_types.h 2018-02-14 20:24:42.038255000 +0100 +++ linux-2.6/include/linux/blk_types.h 2018-03-21 15:04:54.969999000 +0100 @@ -20,8 +20,13 @@ typedef void (bio_end_io_t) (struct bio /* * Block error status values. See block/blk-core:blk_errors for the details. + * Alpha cannot write a byte atomically, so we need to use 32-bit value. */ +#if defined(CONFIG_ALPHA) && !defined(__alpha_bwx__) +typedef u32 __bitwise blk_status_t; +#else typedef u8 __bitwise blk_status_t; +#endif #define BLK_STS_OK 0 #define BLK_STS_NOTSUPP ((__force blk_status_t)1) #define BLK_STS_TIMEOUT ((__force blk_status_t)2) -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-alpha" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html