• Brian Foster's avatar
    xfs: don't fail verifier on empty attr3 leaf block · f28cef9e
    Brian Foster authored
    The attr fork can transition from shortform to leaf format while
    empty if the first xattr doesn't fit in shortform. While this empty
    leaf block state is intended to be transient, it is technically not
    due to the transactional implementation of the xattr set operation.
    
    We historically have a couple of bandaids to work around this
    problem. The first is to hold the buffer after the format conversion
    to prevent premature writeback of the empty leaf buffer and the
    second is to bypass the xattr count check in the verifier during
    recovery. The latter assumes that the xattr set is also in the log
    and will be recovered into the buffer soon after the empty leaf
    buffer is reconstructed. This is not guaranteed, however.
    
    If the filesystem crashes after the format conversion but before the
    xattr set that induced it, only the format conversion may exist in
    the log. When recovered, this creates a latent corrupted state on
    the inode as any subsequent attempts to read the buffer fail due to
    verifier failure. This includes further attempts to set xattrs on
    the inode or attempts to destroy the attr fork, which prevents the
    inode from ever being removed from the unlinked list.
    
    To avoid this condition, accept that an empty attr leaf block is a
    valid state and remove the count check from the verifier. This means
    that on rare occasions an attr fork might exist in an unexpected
    state, but is otherwise consistent and functional. Note that we
    retain the logic to avoid racing with metadata writeback to reduce
    the window where this can occur.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarBrian Foster <bfoster@redhat.com>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarDarrick J. Wong <darrick.wong@oracle.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarDarrick J. Wong <darrick.wong@oracle.com>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarChristoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
    f28cef9e
xfs_attr_leaf.c 82.5 KB