From: Karl Mehltretter <kmehltretter@gmail.com>
To: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
Cc: Karl Mehltretter <kmehltretter@gmail.com>,
Andreas Dilger <adilger.kernel@dilger.ca>,
Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>, Baokun Li <libaokun@linux.alibaba.com>,
Ojaswin Mujoo <ojaswin@linux.ibm.com>,
"Ritesh Harjani (IBM)" <ritesh.list@gmail.com>,
Zhang Yi <yi.zhang@huawei.com>,
linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: [PATCH] ext4: return an error when a journal block is not mapped
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2026 20:06:29 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20261004180629.27213-1-kmehltretter@gmail.com> (raw)
If the internal journal inode contains a hole, ext4_map_blocks() returns
0. ext4_journal_bmap() logs "journal bmap failed" and aborts the
journal, but also returns 0 and leaves *block unchanged.
jbd2_journal_bmap() takes that as success and uses the unchanged logical
journal block number as a physical filesystem block number. Journal I/O
can then overwrite filesystem blocks outside the journal despite the
abort.
Return -EFSCORRUPTED for a hole, matching the error passed to
jbd2_journal_abort(). Keep propagating negative mapping errors.
Fixes: 62913ae96de7 ("ext4, jbd2: add an optimized bmap for the journal inode")
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Assisted-by: LLM
Signed-off-by: Karl Mehltretter <kmehltretter@gmail.com>
---
Found with an experimental clang that warns when a function returns 0
right after reporting a failure.
Recorded QEMU A/B testing used x86_64 kernels and a 1 KiB-block image
with a hole in the journal inode starting at logical block 40. The
unpatched kernel overwrote filesystem block 40, a reserved GDT block.
With the patch, none of the marker blocks changed. There were three
runs per kernel.
Both kernels logged the mapping failure and journal abort:
EXT4-fs (vda): journal bmap failed: block 40 ret 0
Aborting journal on device vda-8.
fs/ext4/super.c | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/fs/ext4/super.c b/fs/ext4/super.c
index bca0dc87d0b7..3e7dabe45153 100644
--- a/fs/ext4/super.c
+++ b/fs/ext4/super.c
@@ -5967,7 +5967,7 @@ static int ext4_journal_bmap(journal_t *journal, sector_t *block)
"journal bmap failed: block %llu ret %d\n",
*block, ret);
jbd2_journal_abort(journal, ret ? ret : -EFSCORRUPTED);
- return ret;
+ return ret ? ret : -EFSCORRUPTED;
}
*block = map.m_pblk;
return 0;
base-commit: e767a4ea70a3992c37ed604157d32f0dfbf9b1e3
--
2.53.0
next reply other threads:[~2026-10-04 18:06 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-10-04 18:06 Karl Mehltretter [this message]
2026-10-05 11:18 ` Jan Kara
2026-10-08 7:25 ` Zhang Yi
2026-10-08 8:32 ` Markus Elfring
2026-10-08 10:08 ` Jan Kara
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