xfs: fix incorrect i_nlink caused by inode racing

The following error occurred during the fsstress test:

XFS: Assertion failed: VFS_I(ip)->i_nlink >= 2, file: fs/xfs/xfs_inode.c, line: 2452

The problem was that inode race condition causes incorrect i_nlink to be
written to disk, and then it is read into memory. Consider the following
call graph, inodes that are marked as both XFS_IFLUSHING and
XFS_IRECLAIMABLE, i_nlink will be reset to 1 and then restored to original
value in xfs_reinit_inode(). Therefore, the i_nlink of directory on disk
may be set to 1.

  xfsaild
      xfs_inode_item_push
          xfs_iflush_cluster
              xfs_iflush
                  xfs_inode_to_disk

  xfs_iget
      xfs_iget_cache_hit
          xfs_iget_recycle
              xfs_reinit_inode
                  inode_init_always

xfs_reinit_inode() needs to hold the ILOCK_EXCL as it is changing internal
inode state and can race with other RCU protected inode lookups. On the
read side, xfs_iflush_cluster() grabs the ILOCK_SHARED while under rcu +
ip->i_flags_lock, and so xfs_iflush/xfs_inode_to_disk() are protected from
racing inode updates (during transactions) by that lock.

Fixes: ff7bebeb91f8 ("xfs: refactor the inode recycling code") # goes further back than this
Signed-off-by: Long Li <leo.lilong@huawei.com>
Reviewed-by: Darrick J. Wong <djwong@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Darrick J. Wong <djwong@kernel.org>
1 file changed