I see that current implementation of __sync_filesystem() ignores the return code from ->sync_fs(). I am not sure why that's the case. Ignoring ->sync_fs() return code is problematic for overlayfs where it can return error if sync_filesystem() on upper super block failed. That error will simply be lost and sycnfs(overlay_fd), will get success (despite the fact it failed). I am assuming that we want to continue to call __sync_blockdev() despite the fact that there have been errors reported from ->sync_fs(). So I wrote this simple patch which captures the error from ->sync_fs() but continues to call __sync_blockdev() and returns error from sync_fs() if there is one. There might be some very good reasons to not capture ->sync_fs() return code, I don't know. Hence thought of proposing this patch. Atleast I will get to know the reason. I still need to figure a way out how to propagate overlay sync_fs() errors to user space. Signed-off-by: Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@xxxxxxxxxx> --- fs/sync.c | 8 ++++++-- 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) Index: redhat-linux/fs/sync.c =================================================================== --- redhat-linux.orig/fs/sync.c 2020-12-16 09:15:49.831565653 -0500 +++ redhat-linux/fs/sync.c 2020-12-16 09:23:42.499853207 -0500 @@ -30,14 +30,18 @@ */ static int __sync_filesystem(struct super_block *sb, int wait) { + int ret, ret2; + if (wait) sync_inodes_sb(sb); else writeback_inodes_sb(sb, WB_REASON_SYNC); if (sb->s_op->sync_fs) - sb->s_op->sync_fs(sb, wait); - return __sync_blockdev(sb->s_bdev, wait); + ret = sb->s_op->sync_fs(sb, wait); + ret2 = __sync_blockdev(sb->s_bdev, wait); + + return ret ? ret : ret2; } /*