** Short Version ** In ext4 with dioread_nolock, we could have a scenario where the bh returned by get_blocks (ext4_get_block_unwritten()) in __block_write_begin_int() has UNWRITTEN and MAPPED flag set. Since such a bh does not have NEW flag set we never zero out the range of bh that is not under write, causing whatever stale data is present in the folio at that time to be written out to disk. To fix this mark the buffer as new in _ext4_get_block(), in case it is unwritten. ----- ** Long Version ** The issue mentioned above was resulting in two different bugs: 1. On block size < page size case in ext4, generic/269 was reliably failing with dioread_nolock. The state of the write was as follows: * The write was extending i_size. * The last block of the file was fallocated and had an unwritten extent * We were near ENOSPC and hence we were switching to non-delayed alloc allocation. In this case, the back trace that triggers the bug is as follows: ext4_da_write_begin() /* switch to nodelalloc due to low space */ ext4_write_begin() ext4_should_dioread_nolock() // true since mount flags still have delalloc __block_write_begin(..., ext4_get_block_unwritten) __block_write_begin_int() for(each buffer head in page) { /* first iteration, this is bh1 which contains i_size */ if (!buffer_mapped) get_block() /* returns bh with only UNWRITTEN and MAPPED */ /* second iteration, bh2 */ if (!buffer_mapped) get_block() /* we fail here, could be ENOSPC */ } if (err) /* * this would zero out all new buffers and mark them uptodate. * Since bh1 was never marked new, we skip it here which causes * the bug later. */ folio_zero_new_buffers(); /* ext4_wrte_begin() error handling */ ext4_truncate_failed_write() ext4_truncate() ext4_block_truncate_page() __ext4_block_zero_page_range() if(!buffer_uptodate()) ext4_read_bh_lock() ext4_read_bh() -> ... ext4_submit_bh_wbc() BUG_ON(buffer_unwritten(bh)); /* !!! */ 2. The second issue is stale data exposure with page size >= blocksize with dioread_nolock. The conditions needed for it to happen are same as the previous issue ie dioread_nolock around ENOSPC condition. The issue is also similar where in __block_write_begin_int() when we call ext4_get_block_unwritten() on the buffer_head and the underlying extent is unwritten, we get an unwritten and mapped buffer head. Since it is not new, we never zero out the partial range which is not under write, thus writing stale data to disk. This can be easily observed with the following reporducer: fallocate -l 4k testfile xfs_io -c "pwrite 2k 2k" testfile # hexdump output will have stale data in from byte 0 to 2k in testfile hexdump -C testfile NOTE: To trigger this, we need dioread_nolock enabled and write happening via ext4_write_begin(), which is usually used when we have -o nodealloc. Since dioread_nolock is disabled with nodelalloc, the only alternate way to call ext4_write_begin() is to fill make sure dellayed alloc switches to nodelalloc (ext4_da_write_begin() calls ext4_write_begin()). This will usually happen when FS is almost full like the way generic/269 was triggering it in Issue 1 above. This might make this issue harder to replicate hence for reliable replicate, I used the below patch to temporarily allow dioread_nolock with nodelalloc and then mount the disk with -o nodealloc,dioread_nolock. With this you can hit the stale data issue 100% of times: @@ -508,8 +508,8 @@ static inline int ext4_should_dioread_nolock(struct inode *inode) if (ext4_should_journal_data(inode)) return 0; /* temporary fix to prevent generic/422 test failures */ - if (!test_opt(inode->i_sb, DELALLOC)) - return 0; + // if (!test_opt(inode->i_sb, DELALLOC)) + // return 0; return 1; } ------- After applying this patch to mark buffer as NEW, both the above issues are fixed. Signed-off-by: Ojaswin Mujoo <ojaswin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- fs/ext4/inode.c | 4 ++++ 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+) diff --git a/fs/ext4/inode.c b/fs/ext4/inode.c index 6c490f05e2ba..a30bfec0b525 100644 --- a/fs/ext4/inode.c +++ b/fs/ext4/inode.c @@ -765,6 +765,10 @@ static int _ext4_get_block(struct inode *inode, sector_t iblock, if (ret > 0) { map_bh(bh, inode->i_sb, map.m_pblk); ext4_update_bh_state(bh, map.m_flags); + + if (buffer_unwritten(bh)) + set_buffer_new(bh); + bh->b_size = inode->i_sb->s_blocksize * map.m_len; ret = 0; } else if (ret == 0) { -- 2.31.1