There are two possible races in handling of private_list in buffer cache.
1) When fsync_buffers_list() processes a private_list, it clears
b_assoc_mapping and moves buffer to its private list. Now
drop_buffers() comes, sees a buffer is on list so it calls
__remove_assoc_queue() which complains about b_assoc_mapping being
cleared (as it cannot propagate possible IO error). This race has been
actually observed in the wild.
2) When fsync_buffers_list() processes a private_list,
mark_buffer_dirty_inode() can be called on bh which is already on the
private list of fsync_buffers_list(). As buffer is on some list (note
that the check is performed without private_lock), it is not readded to
the mapping's private_list and after fsync_buffers_list() finishes, we
have a dirty buffer which should be on private_list but it isn't. This
race has not been reported, probably because most (but not all) callers
of mark_buffer_dirty_inode() hold i_mutex and thus are serialized with
fsync().
Fix these issues by not clearing b_assoc_map when fsync_buffers_list()
moves buffer to a dedicated list and by reinserting buffer in private_list
when it is found dirty after we have submitted buffer for IO. We also
change the tests whether a buffer is on a private list from
!list_empty(&bh->b_assoc_buffers) to bh->b_assoc_map so that they are
single word reads and hence lockless checks are safe.
Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Cc: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>