Re: [PATCH AUTOSEL 4.4 27/37] ext4: work around deleting a file with i_nlink == 0 safely

From: Sasha Levin
Date: Wed Dec 11 2019 - 15:04:58 EST


On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 11:19:59AM -0500, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 10:38:03AM -0500, Sasha Levin wrote:
From: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@xxxxxxx>

[ Upstream commit c7df4a1ecb8579838ec8c56b2bb6a6716e974f37 ]

If the file system is corrupted such that a file's i_links_count is
too small, then it's possible that when unlinking that file, i_nlink
will already be zero. Previously we were working around this kind of
corruption by forcing i_nlink to one; but we were doing this before
trying to delete the directory entry --- and if the file system is
corrupted enough that ext4_delete_entry() fails, then we exit with
i_nlink elevated, and this causes the orphan inode list handling to be
FUBAR'ed, such that when we unmount the file system, the orphan inode
list can get corrupted.

A better way to fix this is to simply skip trying to call drop_nlink()
if i_nlink is already zero, thus moving the check to the place where
it makes the most sense.

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=205433

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20191112032903.8828-1-tytso@xxxxxxx
Signed-off-by: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@xxxxxxx>
Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxx
Reviewed-by: Andreas Dilger <adilger@xxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin <sashal@xxxxxxxxxx>

I'm confused; this was explicitly cc'ed to stable@xxxxxxxxxx, so why
is your AUTOSEL picking this up? I would have thought this would get
picked up via the normal stable kernel processes.

My mistake, appologies.

--
Thanks,
Sasha