[ 3.8.y.z extended stable ] Patch "ext4: don't allow ext4_free_blocks() to fail due to ENOMEM" has been added to staging queue

[Kamal Mostafa]

This is a note to let you know that I have just added a patch titled

    ext4: don't allow ext4_free_blocks() to fail due to ENOMEM

to the linux-3.8.y-queue branch of the 3.8.y.z extended stable tree 
which can be found at:

 http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git?p=ubuntu/linux.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/linux-3.8.y-queue

This patch is scheduled to be released in version 3.8.13.5.

If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to this tree, please 
reply to this email.

For more information about the 3.8.y.z tree, see
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Dev/ExtendedStable

Thanks.
-Kamal

------

>From bb7aefaf9286ebfa565909a0be902091d54459b7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Theodore Ts'o <tytso at mit.edu>
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2013 00:40:35 -0400
Subject: ext4: don't allow ext4_free_blocks() to fail due to ENOMEM

commit e7676a704ee0a1ef71a6b23760b5a8f6896cb1a1 upstream.

The filesystem should not be marked inconsistent if ext4_free_blocks()
is not able to allocate memory.  Unfortunately some callers (most
notably ext4_truncate) don't have a way to reflect an error back up to
the VFS.  And even if we did, most userspace applications won't deal
with most system calls returning ENOMEM anyway.

Reported-by: Nagachandra P <nagachandra at gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso at mit.edu>
Signed-off-by: Kamal Mostafa <kamal at canonical.com>
---
 fs/ext4/mballoc.c | 11 ++++++++---
 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/fs/ext4/mballoc.c b/fs/ext4/mballoc.c
index 1206682..c8003a1 100644
--- a/fs/ext4/mballoc.c
+++ b/fs/ext4/mballoc.c
@@ -4652,11 +4652,16 @@ do_more:
 		 * blocks being freed are metadata. these blocks shouldn't
 		 * be used until this transaction is committed
 		 */
+	retry:
 		new_entry = kmem_cache_alloc(ext4_free_data_cachep, GFP_NOFS);
 		if (!new_entry) {
-			ext4_mb_unload_buddy(&e4b);
-			err = -ENOMEM;
-			goto error_return;
+			/*
+			 * We use a retry loop because
+			 * ext4_free_blocks() is not allowed to fail.
+			 */
+			cond_resched();
+			congestion_wait(BLK_RW_ASYNC, HZ/50);
+			goto retry;
 		}
 		new_entry->efd_start_cluster = bit;
 		new_entry->efd_group = block_group;
--
1.8.1.2