[PATCH 3/4] xfs: remote attributes need to be considered data

[Brian Foster]

On Tue, Jul 21, 2015 at 11:09:04AM +1000, Dave Chinner wrote:
> From: Dave Chinner <dchinner at redhat.com>
> 
> We don't log remote attribute contents, and instead write them
> synchronously before we commit the block allocation and attribute
> tree update transaction. As a result we are writing to the allocated
> space before the allcoation has been made permanent.
> 
> As a result, we cannot consider this allocation to be a metadata
> allocation. Metadata allocation can take blocks from the free list

							   busy list ?

> and so reuse them before the transaction that freed the block is
> committed to disk. This behaviour is perfectly fine for journalled
> metadata changes as log recovery will ensure the free operation is
> replayed before the overwrite, but for remote attribute writes this
> is not the case.
> 
> Hence we have to consider the remote attribute blocks to contain
> data and allocate accordingly. We do this by dropping the
> XFS_BMAPI_METADATA flag from the block allocation. This means the
> allocation will not use blocks that are on the busy list without
> first ensuring that the freeing transaction has been committed to
> disk and the blocks removed from the busy list. This ensures we will
> never overwrite a freed block without first ensuring that it is
> really free.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner <dchinner at redhat.com>
> ---

Looks good:

Reviewed-by: Brian Foster <bfoster at redhat.com>

>  fs/xfs/libxfs/xfs_attr_remote.c | 15 +++++++++++----
>  1 file changed, 11 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/fs/xfs/libxfs/xfs_attr_remote.c b/fs/xfs/libxfs/xfs_attr_remote.c
> index 2faec26..dd71403 100644
> --- a/fs/xfs/libxfs/xfs_attr_remote.c
> +++ b/fs/xfs/libxfs/xfs_attr_remote.c
> @@ -451,14 +451,21 @@ xfs_attr_rmtval_set(
>  
>  		/*
>  		 * Allocate a single extent, up to the size of the value.
> +		 *
> +		 * Note that we have to consider this a data allocation as we
> +		 * write the remote attribute without logging the contents.
> +		 * Hence we must ensure that we aren't using blocks that are on
> +		 * the busy list so that we don't overwrite blocks which have
> +		 * recently been freed but their transactions are not yet
> +		 * committed to disk. If we overwrite the contents of a busy
> +		 * extent and then crash then the block may not contain the
> +		 * correct metadata after log recovery occurs.
>  		 */
>  		xfs_bmap_init(args->flist, args->firstblock);
>  		nmap = 1;
>  		error = xfs_bmapi_write(args->trans, dp, (xfs_fileoff_t)lblkno,
> -				  blkcnt,
> -				  XFS_BMAPI_ATTRFORK | XFS_BMAPI_METADATA,
> -				  args->firstblock, args->total, &map, &nmap,
> -				  args->flist);
> +				  blkcnt, XFS_BMAPI_ATTRFORK, args->firstblock,
> +				  args->total, &map, &nmap, args->flist);
>  		if (!error) {
>  			error = xfs_bmap_finish(&args->trans, args->flist,
>  						&committed);
> -- 
> 2.1.4
> 
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