ext4: drain in-flight DIO before buffered write fallback

generic/746 started failing intermittently on ext3 (no-extent inodes).
The test triggers 'Page cache invalidation failure on direct I/O'
warnings and subsequent fsync returns -EIO. Adding a 50ms delay
between ext4_buffered_write_iter() and filemap_write_and_wait_range()
in ext4_dio_write_iter() makes the race almost always reproducible.

On no-extent inodes, DIO writes to holes cannot use unwritten extents,
so ext4_iomap_alloc() leaves m_flags=0 and ext4_map_blocks() returns 0.
The iomap layer then returns -ENOTBLK, causing fallback to buffered I/O.

The fallback path in ext4_dio_write_iter() calls
ext4_buffered_write_iter() which dirties pages, then does flush and
invalidate. However, there's an unprotected window between
ext4_buffered_write_iter() returning (with inode lock released) and
the subsequent flush+invalidate.

Concurrent async DIO completions from other threads can run
kiocb_invalidate_post_direct_write() during this window. If pages have
been re-dirtied, post-invalidation finds dirty pages and triggers the
warning, setting -EIO in the error sequence.

Consider a file with two 4k extents: [hole][written]. Thread A does
DIO to the written extent, while thread B does DIO spanning both:

  kworker A (4k DIO, allocated block)    kworker B (8k DIO, fallback)
  -----------------------------------    ----------------------------
  inode_lock_shared()                    inode_lock_shared()
  iomap_dio_rw():                        iomap_dio_rw():
    kiocb_invalidate_pages -> clean        iomap_begin -> -ENOTBLK
    submit_bio (async)                     dio->size = 0
  inode_unlock_shared()                  inode_unlock_shared()

  [bio pending in block layer]           /* fallback: lock released */
                                         ext4_buffered_write_iter()
                                           inode_lock(exclusive)
                                           generic_perform_write()
                                             -> dirty pages [0, 8k]
                                           inode_unlock(exclusive)

                                         /* pages dirty, no lock */
  [bio completes]                        filemap_write_and_wait_range()
  iomap_dio_complete()                     -> flush dirty pages
    kiocb_invalidate_post_direct_write() invalidate_mapping_pages()
      invalidate_inode_pages2_range()
      -> finds dirty page!
      -> dio_warn_stale_pagecache()
      -> errseq_set(-EIO)

This issue can be triggered through normal I/O paths, not just
intentionally overlapping DIO writes from userspace. For example,
generic/746 uses a loop device where multiple kworkers issue concurrent
I/O to the backing file. Additionally, when block_size < folio_size,
non-overlapping DIO writes that share a large folio can also trigger
the race.

Add inode_dio_wait() in ext4_buffered_write_iter() before
ext4_write_checks() to drain all in-flight DIO. This ensures that
all DIO clears existing pages before submitting IO (via
kiocb_invalidate_pages()), all BIO waits for all DIO to complete
(via inode_dio_wait()), and ext4_write_checks() observes the inode
size after all completed DIO so that ext4_block_zero_eof() does not
race with in-flight DIO, thus eliminating the race.

Fixes: 378f32bab371 ("ext4: introduce direct I/O write using iomap infrastructure")
Suggested-by: Zhang Yi <yi.zhang@huawei.com>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/d1adcf7c-c276-458d-9cac-68a4410f7626@gmail.com
Reviewed-by: Zhang Yi <yi.zhang@huawei.com>
Reviewed-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Baokun Li <libaokun@linux.alibaba.com>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260629113827.4074335-3-libaokun@linux.alibaba.com
Signed-off-by: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>

0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions