Thanks, applied, with a slightly edited commit description. - Ted ext4: fix potential infinite loop in ext4_da_writepages() From: Toshiyuki Okajima <toshi.okajima@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On linux-2.6.36-rc2, if we execute the following script, we can hang the system when the /bin/sync command is executed: ======================================================================== #!/bin/sh echo -n "HANG UP TEST: " /bin/dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/img bs=1k count=1 seek=1M 2> /dev/null /sbin/mkfs.ext4 -Fq /tmp/img /bin/mount -o loop -t ext4 /tmp/img /mnt /bin/dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/file bs=1 count=1 \ seek=$((16*1024*1024*1024*1024-4096)) 2> /dev/null /bin/sync /bin/umount /mnt echo "DONE" exit 0 ======================================================================== We can see the following backtrace if we get the kdump when this hangup occurs: ====================================================================== kthread() => bdi_writeback_thread() => wb_do_writeback() => wb_writeback() => writeback_inodes_wb() => writeback_sb_inodes() => writeback_single_inode() => ext4_da_writepages() ---+ ^ infinite | | loop | +-------------+ ====================================================================== The reason why this hangup happens is described as follows: 1) We write the last extent block of the file whose size is the filesystem maximum size. 2) "BH_Delay" flag is set on the buffer_head of its block. 3) - the member, "m_lblk" of struct mpage_da_data is 4294967295 (UINT_MAX) - the member, "m_len" of struct mpage_da_data is 1 mpage_put_bnr_to_bhs() which is called via ext4_da_writepages() cannot clear "BH_Delay" flag of the buffer_head because the type of m_lblk is ext4_lblk_t and then m_lblk + m_len is overflow. Therefore an infinite loop occurs because ext4_da_writepages() cannot write the page (which corresponds to the block) since "BH_Delay" flag isn't cleared. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- static void mpage_put_bnr_to_bhs(struct mpage_da_data *mpd, struct ext4_map_blocks *map) { ... int blocks = map->m_len; ... do { // cur_logical = 4294967295 // map->m_lblk = 4294967295 // blocks = 1 // *** map->m_lblk + blocks == 0 (OVERFLOW!) *** // (cur_logical >= map->m_lblk + blocks) => true if (cur_logical >= map->m_lblk + blocks) break; ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTE: Mounting with the nodelalloc option will avoid this codepath, and thus, avoid this hang Signed-off-by: Toshiyuki Okajima <toshi.okajima@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@xxxxxxx> -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ext4" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html