[PATCH] fix inode state incoherency
This patch fixes a hard-to-trigger condition, where the inode is on the inode_in_use list while it's state is dirty. In this state dirty pages are not written back in sync() or from kupdate, only from direct page reclaim. And this causes a livelock in balance_dirty_pages after a while. The actual sequence of events required to get into this state is: thread function inode state inode list ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 __sync_single_inode (background) I_DIRTY sb->s_io 1 do_writepages ... I_LOCKED 2 __writeback_single_inode (sync) sleeps I_LOCKED 1 __sync_single_inode (background) finish 0 inode_in_use 2 __writeback_single_inode (sync) wakeup 0 2 __sync_single_inode (sync) 0 2 do_writepages ... I_LOCKED 3 __mark_inode_dirty I_LOCKED | I_DIRTY 2 __sync_single_inode (sync) finish I_DIRTY left on inode_in_use Signed-off-by: Miklos Szeredi <miklos@szeredi.hu> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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