[Karmic] file corruption on ext3 filesystem?

[Stefan Bader]

Tetsuo Handa wrote:
> Tetsuo Handa wrote:
>> I'm experiencing file corruption problem.
>> I don't know whether this is a bug of kernel or not.
> It turned out that this was because Karmic mounts ext3 filesystem with
> data=writeback mode.
> 
> CONFIG_EXT3_DEFAULTS_TO_ORDERED says
> 
>   The use of "data=writeback" can cause
>   unwritten data to appear in files after an system crash or
>   power failure, which can be a security issue.
> 
> and I think that "unprivileged user can steal the content of deleted files
> (e.g. /etc/shadow deleted by /usr/bin/passwd) when power failure occurred"
> is a security problem.
> 
> http://valhenson.livejournal.com/37921.html
> 
> Thanks.
> 

Seems we need to revisit this config option as it was introduced in a way that
made the default change without noticing. Thanks for bringing the issue to our
attention.

-Stefan