ext4: avoid deadlock on sync-mounted FS w/o journal

Processes hang forever on a sync-mounted ext2 file system that
is mounted with the ext4 module (default in Fedora 16).

I can reproduce this reliably by mounting an ext2 partition with
"-o sync" and opening a new file an that partition with vim. vim
will hang in "D" state forever.  The same happens on ext4 without
a journal.

I am attaching a small patch here that solves this issue for me.
In the sync mounted case without a journal,
ext4_handle_dirty_metadata() may call sync_dirty_buffer(), which
can't be called with buffer lock held.

Also move mb_cache_entry_release inside lock to avoid race
fixed previously by 8a2bfdcb ext[34]: EA block reference count racing fix
Note too that ext2 fixed this same problem in 2006 with
b2f49033 [PATCH] fix deadlock in ext2

Signed-off-by: Martin.Wilck@ts.fujitsu.com
[sandeen@redhat.com: move mb_cache_entry_release before unlock, edit commit msg]
Signed-off-by: Eric Sandeen <sandeen@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>

diff --git a/fs/ext4/xattr.c b/fs/ext4/xattr.c
index 1bff752d1b596616548ed00e9939542739f2ddbb..3369157df852f25219426e5e66c9de696206f1b6 100644 (file)
--- a/fs/ext4/xattr.c
+++ b/fs/ext4/xattr.c
@@ -484,18 +484,19 @@ ext4_xattr_release_block(handle_t *handle, struct inode *inode,
                ext4_free_blocks(handle, inode, bh, 0, 1,
                                 EXT4_FREE_BLOCKS_METADATA |
                                 EXT4_FREE_BLOCKS_FORGET);
+               unlock_buffer(bh);
        } else {
                le32_add_cpu(&BHDR(bh)->h_refcount, -1);
+               if (ce)
+                       mb_cache_entry_release(ce);
+               unlock_buffer(bh);
                error = ext4_handle_dirty_metadata(handle, inode, bh);
                if (IS_SYNC(inode))
                        ext4_handle_sync(handle);
                dquot_free_block(inode, 1);
                ea_bdebug(bh, "refcount now=%d; releasing",
                          le32_to_cpu(BHDR(bh)->h_refcount));
-               if (ce)
-                       mb_cache_entry_release(ce);
        }
-       unlock_buffer(bh);
 out:
        ext4_std_error(inode->i_sb, error);
        return;