2.4.20 ext3 Data Corrupting Bug Fixed

An anonymous reader writes "The ext3 data corrupting bug found in the latest stable Linux kernel and reported by Slashdot here and here has been fixed. In this interesting KernelTrap story Andrew Morton describes the problem and offers a working patch. Evidently the bug has its roots in a much bigger design issue, something that won't likely be fixed in the current 2.4 kernel series. In any case, with Morton's patch applied your data will not be corrupted."

Comments

Re:Which as-shipped distros are affected by this?

[Cecil]

Which distributions ship using ext3 filesystems by default and setting them to mode journalled in their default ISO images? Um, none?

Did you mean that you run your ext3 filesystems in full-journal mode, and would like to know if you have to update? Yes. Regardless of distro.

In either case, please remember that journalled mode is NOT the default. The default is ordered. Unless you're explicitly setting your filesystem to full journalling, you aren't affected by this problem.

HTH.

Re:Yet another proof

[zcat_NZ]

On a less inflamatory note; it demonstrates something that most of us are already well aware of. Don't go enabling advanced features or running bleeding-edge kernels unless you either have good backups, or are happy to risk losing some data.

You're an idiot if you don't have backups anyhow. The most reliable filesystem in the world isn't going to save you from a hard-drive failure, user error, malicious code, theft, flood, fire, lightning strike, earthquake.. These things eat data a lot more frequently than filesystem bugs!

Expect data loss. Keep backups.