Re: loopback broken in 1.99.7

Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl
Mon, 27 May 1996 00:31:39 +0200


Jonathan H. Pickard:

: The loopback device in 1.99.7 puts processes who attempt to close it into a
: coma (using mount-2.5j). It's possible to use losetup to get status on it
: and to attach a file to it, and it's possible to read the data on the other
: end of it, but once anything tries to close it, the process freezes and
: hangs forever in a state like (after the attached xterm is killed off)

: 9311 ? DW 0:00 (losetup)

You gave a lot of config details, but do not give the commands you use.
I just checked again that I can open and read/write and close a file
via /dev/loop0 without any problems in 1.99.7.

Andries

[Not that I am convinced that the loop code is correct right now.
There used to be the possibility of a deadlock (because loop
needs another buffer before it can write a buffer to disk),
and I have not checked that this problem cannot occur anymore.
But this would be a kind of deadlock that kills the system,
while you describe a single hanging process.]