Re: bug tracking question (VFS crash)

Alexander Viro (viro@math.psu.edu)
Sat, 24 Apr 1999 08:43:42 -0400 (EDT)


On Sat, 24 Apr 1999, Manfred Spraul wrote:

> Alexander Viro wrote:
> > When we got a bug. It should never happen. Can you reproduce the
> > situation?
>
> No I can't.
> But I think that fput() should handle that situation without
> crashing.

Fixing the symptomes never does anything good. Either it's
a bad RAM and then nothing will help, or we have a f_count leak
somewhere, and we'ld better find the reason instead of masking
the result. Actually we'ld better remove all dead tests - that way we'll
have better chances to catch the sucker.

> This means there must be an bad entry in
> files->fd[].
Nope, just that something called fput() on the file in question
when it shouldn't.

> get_unused_fd() [in fs/open.c] contains a sanity check for
> that case. Do you know why that check was added?
Traces of hunting for similar bugs.

What .config do you have? What kind of stuff ran on the box when (and
before) it happened?

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