Re: PROBLEM: ext2/mount - multiple mounts corrupts inodes

[Andreas Dilger <adilger@turbolabs.com>]

On Jan 30, 2002  15:07 -0800, Kris Urquhart wrote:
> [1.] One line summary of the problem: 
> A mount of an already mounted ext2 partition corrupts inodes if there have
> been recent writes without an intervening sync.

This _should_ be handled OK by the kernel simply by not mounting the
filesystem the second time.  If you try and mount it a second time it
_should_ just do a "bind" mount instead of a real mount, I think.

<stating the obvious>
Rather than mounting the device to try and see if it is already
mounted, use /proc/mounts or /etc/mtab or "df" or "mount" output
instead.  Doctor, it hurts when I do this... ;-).
</stating the obvious>

Granted, this does appear to be a bug so the above will only work
around it and not fix it.  Al Viro is the one to pester about it.
Hopefully he will see this email and reply (== fix the problem).

> [4.] Kernel version (from /proc/version): 
> Linux version 2.4.10 (kurquhart@bay.sw.littlefeet-inc.com) (gcc version
> egcs-2.91.66 
> 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)) #1 Wed Jan 30 09:46:52 PST 2002

The 2.4.10 kernel is a bad one to use for several reasons, don't use it.

Cheers, Andreas

PS - nice bug report, if only all of them were this useful.
--
Andreas Dilger
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2resize/
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/