Data Corrupting ext3 Bug In Latest Linux 2.4.20

An anonymous reader writes "Andrew Morton alerted readers of the Linux Kernel mailing list today that ext3 in the 2.4.20 kernel has a new bug that can easily cause file data corruption at unmount time. The bug will only affect people using ext3 in "data=journal" mode, which fortunately is not the default... Full details can be read on KernelTrap."

Comments

Re:So I'm clueless

[J'raxis]

Unmounts happen at shutdown. You also need to unmount before scanning/fixing a filesystem. The whole bug here pertains to the fact that it isn't flushing ("syncing") the last 30 seconds of cached data to the disk beforehand. A cold reboot without unmounting could potentially cause all kinds of other data inconsistency problems to pop up.

The temporary fix seems to be to run sync manually. Stick "sync" in your /etc/rc.d/init.d/mountfs (or whatever it's called on your system) script right before the "umount" line.