ext4: prevent stale extent cache entries caused by concurrent I/O writeback

Currently, in the I/O writeback path, ext4_map_blocks() may attempt to
cache additional unrelated extents in the extent status tree without
holding the inode's i_rwsem and the mapping's invalidate_lock. This can
lead to stale extent status entries remaining in certain scenarios,
potentially causing data corruption.

For example, when performing a collapse range in ext4_collapse_range(),
it clears the extent cache and dirty pages before removing blocks and
shifting extents. It also holds the i_data_sem during these two
operations. However, both ext4_ext_remove_space() and
ext4_ext_shift_extents() may briefly release the i_data_sem if journal
credits are insufficient (ext4_datasem_ensure_credits()). If another
writeback process writes dirty pages from other regions during this
interval, it may cache extents that are about to be modified. Unless
ext4_collapse_range() explicitly clears the extent cache again, these
cached entries can become stale and inconsistent with the actual
extents.

     0 a  n       b      c         m
     | |  |       |      |         |
    [www][wwwwww][wwwwwwww]...[wwwww][wwww]...
          |                           |
          N                           M

Assume that block a is dirty. The collapse range operation is removing
data from n to m and drops i_data_sem immediately after removing the
extent from b to c. At the same time, a concurrent writeback begins to
write back block a; it will reloads the extent from [n, b) into the
extent status tree since it does not hold the i_rwsem or the
invalidate_lock. After the collapse range operation, it left the stale
extent [n, b), which points logical block n to N, but the actual
physical block of n should be M.

Similarly, both ext4_insert_range() and ext4_truncate() have the same
problem. ext4_punch_hole() survived since it re-add a hole extent entry
after removing space since commit 9f1118223aa0 ("ext4: add a hole extent
entry in cache after punch").

In most cases, during dirty page writeback, the block mapping
information is likely to be found in the extent cache, making it less
necessary to search for physical extents. Consequently, loading
unrelated extent caches during writeback appears to be ineffective.
Therefore, fix this by adds EXT4_EX_NOCACHE in the writeback path to
prevent caching of unrelated extents, eliminating this potential source
of corruption.

Signed-off-by: Zhang Yi <yi.zhang@huawei.com>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20250423085257.122685-4-yi.zhang@huaweicloud.com
Signed-off-by: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>

1 files changed, 2 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/fs/ext4/fast_commit.c b/fs/ext4/fast_commit.c
index bfe5b3c40078..1392241de5e6 100644
--- a/fs/ext4/fast_commit.c
+++ b/fs/ext4/fast_commit.c
@@ -918,7 +918,8 @@ static int ext4_fc_write_inode_data(struct inode *inode, u32 *crc)
 		map.m_lblk = cur_lblk_off;
 		map.m_len = new_blk_size - cur_lblk_off + 1;
 		ret = ext4_map_blocks(NULL, inode, &map,
-				      EXT4_GET_BLOCKS_IO_SUBMIT);
+				      EXT4_GET_BLOCKS_IO_SUBMIT |
+				      EXT4_EX_NOCACHE);
 		if (ret < 0)
 			return -ECANCELED;