Brian Foster 1c3cc44f4b ext4: fix dirtyclusters double decrement on fs shutdown
[ Upstream commit 94a8cea54cd935c54fa2fba70354757c0fc245e3 ]

fstests test generic/388 occasionally reproduces a warning in
ext4_put_super() associated with the dirty clusters count:

  WARNING: CPU: 7 PID: 76064 at fs/ext4/super.c:1324 ext4_put_super+0x48c/0x590 [ext4]

Tracing the failure shows that the warning fires due to an
s_dirtyclusters_counter value of -1. IOW, this appears to be a
spurious decrement as opposed to some sort of leak. Further tracing
of the dirty cluster count deltas and an LLM scan of the resulting
output identified the cause as a double decrement in the error path
between ext4_mb_mark_diskspace_used() and the caller
ext4_mb_new_blocks().

First, note that generic/388 is a shutdown vs. fsstress test and so
produces a random set of operations and shutdown injections. In the
problematic case, the shutdown triggers an error return from the
ext4_handle_dirty_metadata() call(s) made from
ext4_mb_mark_context(). The changed value is non-zero at this point,
so ext4_mb_mark_diskspace_used() does not exit after the error
bubbles up from ext4_mb_mark_context(). Instead, the former
decrements both cluster counters and returns the error up to
ext4_mb_new_blocks(). The latter falls into the !ar->len out path
which decrements the dirty clusters counter a second time, creating
the inconsistency.

To avoid this problem and simplify ownership of the cluster
reservation in this codepath, lift the counter reduction to a single
place in the caller. This makes it more clear that
ext4_mb_new_blocks() is responsible for acquiring cluster
reservation (via ext4_claim_free_clusters()) in the !delalloc case
as well as releasing it, regardless of whether it ends up consumed
or returned due to failure.

Fixes: 0087d9fb3f ("ext4: Fix s_dirty_blocks_counter if block allocation failed with nodelalloc")
Signed-off-by: Brian Foster <bfoster@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Baokun Li <libaokun1@huawei.com>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260113171905.118284-1-bfoster@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
Cc: stable@kernel.org
[ Drop mballoc-test changes ]
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Ulrich Hecht <uli@kernel.org>
2026-05-07 10:55:17 +02:00

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