Bug#615998: linux-image-2.6.32-5-xen-amd64: Repeatable "kernel BUG at fs/jbd2/commit.c:534" from Postfix on ext4

[Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>]

On Mon 27-06-11 12:01:40, Ted Tso wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 05:30:11PM +0200, Lukas Czerner wrote:
> > > I've found some. So although data=journal users are minority, there are
> > > some. That being said I agree with you we should do something about it
> > > - either state that we want to fully support data=journal - and then we
> > > should really do better with testing it or deprecate it and remove it
> > > (which would save us some complications in the code).
> > > 
> > > I would be slightly in favor of removing it (code simplicity, less options
> > > to configure for admin, less options to test for us, some users I've come
> > > across actually were not quite sure why they are using it - they just
> > > thought it looks safer).
> 
> Hmm...  FYI, I hope to be able to bring on line automated testing for
> ext4 later this summer (there's a testing person at Google is has
> signed up to work on setting this up as his 20% project).  The test
> matrix that I have him included data=journal, so we will be getting
> better testing in the near future.
  Good! 

> At least historically, data=journalling was the *simpler* case, and
> was the first thing supported by ext4.  (data=ordered required revoke
> handling which didn't land for six months or so).  So I'm not really
> that convinced that removing really buys us that much code
> simplification.
  It does buy us some reduction in number of variants (e.g. write_begin,
write_end, writepage), we also wouldn't have to care about journalled data
during invalidatepage() or releasepage() calls. 
 
> That being siad, it is true that data=journalled isn't necessarily
> faster.  For heavy disk-bound workloads, it can be slower.  So I can
> imagine adding some documentation that warns people not to use
> data=journal unless they really know what they are doing, but at least
> personally, I'm a bit reluctant to dispense with a bug report like
> this by saying, "oh, that feature should be deprecated".
  No, I didn't want to dispense the bug report - we should definitely fix
the bug. I just remarked that data=journal is currently not well tested and
thus using it in production has its problems.

								Honza
-- 
Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
SUSE Labs, CR