Testing request: possible ext4 corruption issue

[Adam Williamson]

On Thu, 2009-10-29 at 20:25 +0100, Guido Grazioli wrote:
> 2009/10/29 Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com>
> >
> > Hi, guys. Jóhann raised a concern about the potential ext4 corruption
> > issue that's currently under discussion upstream:
> >
> > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14354
> >
> > the discussion between Eric and Linus tends towards the theory that this
> > is not affecting 2.6.31, but we'd like to have somewhat more certainty
> > of this.
> 
> It seems (reading slashdot thread about 9.10 release) that ubuntu folks have
> added a notice in the release notes warning about the bug.
> 
> "Possible corruption of large files with ext4 filesystem
> 
> There have been some reports of data corruption with fresh (not
> upgraded) ext4 file systems using the Ubuntu 9.10 kernel when writing
> to large files (over 512MB). The issue is under investigation, and if
> confirmed will be resolved in a post-release update. Users who
> routinely manipulate large files may want to consider using ext3 file
> systems until this issue is resolved. (453579 [launchpad.net])"

That is not about the same bug. That's about the bug I mentioned at the
end of my mail, the exact paragraph you cut out when quoting me. :)

Someone suggested the dubious Ubuntu report was a case of the verified
upstream bug, but it doesn't look like that to me. The upstream report
is about corruption of _any_ size files _on a dirty shutdown of the
system_. The Ubuntu report is about corruption of only _large_ files,
with no need for any kind of shutdown and reboot before the problem is
observed. They look like different issues.

Personally, as I said, I don't much credit the Ubuntu report, at least
unless some other people independently confirm the same problem.

-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net