Re: [PATCH] ext2: do not sleep in ext2_error()

[Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@oracle.com>]

On Fri, Sep 03, 2021 at 08:48:38AM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 03, 2021 at 12:05:38PM +0300, Dan Carpenter wrote:
> > No one expects error logging functions to sleep so sometimes they are
> > called with spinlocks held.  In this case the problematic call tree is:
> > 
> > ext2_statfs() <- disables preempt
> > -> ext2_count_free_inodes()
> >    -> ext2_get_group_desc()
> >       -> ext2_error()
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@oracle.com>
> > ---
> > This is just from static analysis.  NOT TESTED!
> > 
> > Probably a safer fix would be to just call pr_err() instead of
> > ext2_error() in ext2_get_group_desc().  I can send that fix instead if
> > people want.
> 
> Looking at both of the ext2_error() calls in ext2_get_group_desc(),
> those are really more in the way of assertions rather than warning of
> an on-disk corruption issue.  The second "group descriptor not loaded"
> should never happen, and the "block_group >= groups_count" should have
> been caught via an invalid block number or check by the caller (or an
> outright code bug in say ext2_statfs().
> 
> So I suspect both of those would be more usefule as a WARN() rather
> than a call to ext2_error(), since stack trace would actually provide
> more useful data to root causing the issue.  Jan, what do you think?
> 
>      	    	    	 	 - Ted

Thanks Ted,

I'll resend with the WARN() change.

regards,
dan carpenter