In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

btrfs: get rid of warning on transaction commit when using flushoncommit

When using the flushoncommit mount option, during almost every transaction
commit we trigger a warning from __writeback_inodes_sb_nr():

$ cat fs/fs-writeback.c:
(…)
static void __writeback_inodes_sb_nr(struct super_block *sb, …
{

    (...)
    WARN_ON(!rwsem_is_locked(&sb->s_umount));
    (...)

}
(…)

The trace produced in dmesg looks like the following:

[947.473890] WARNING: CPU: 5 PID: 930 at fs/fs-writeback.c:2610 writeback_inodes_sb_nr+0x7e/0xb3
[947.481623] Modules linked in: nfsd nls_cp437 cifs asn1_decoder cifs_arc4 fscache cifs_md4 ipmi_ssif
[947.489571] CPU: 5 PID: 930 Comm: btrfs-transacti Not tainted 95.16.3-srb-asrock-00001-g36437ad63879 #186
[947.497969] RIP: 0010:writeback_inodes_sb_nr+0x7e/0xb3
[947.502097] Code: 24 10 4c 89 44 24 18 c6 (…)
[947.519760] RSP: 0018:ffffc90000777e10 EFLAGS: 00010246
[947.523818] RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: 0000000000963300 RCX: 0000000000000000
[947.529765] RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 000000000000fa51 RDI: ffffc90000777e50
[947.535740] RBP: ffff888101628a90 R08: ffff888100955800 R09: ffff888100956000
[947.541701] R10: 0000000000000002 R11: 0000000000000001 R12: ffff888100963488
[947.547645] R13: ffff888100963000 R14: ffff888112fb7200 R15: ffff888100963460
[947.553621] FS: 0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff88841fd40000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000
[947.560537] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033
[947.565122] CR2: 0000000008be50c4 CR3: 000000000220c000 CR4: 00000000001006e0
[947.571072] Call Trace:
[947.572354] <TASK>
[947.573266] btrfs_commit_transaction+0x1f1/0x998
[947.576785] ? start_transaction+0x3ab/0x44e
[947.579867] ? schedule_timeout+0x8a/0xdd
[947.582716] transaction_kthread+0xe9/0x156
[947.585721] ? btrfs_cleanup_transaction.isra.0+0x407/0x407
[947.590104] kthread+0x131/0x139
[947.592168] ? set_kthread_struct+0x32/0x32
[947.595174] ret_from_fork+0x22/0x30
[947.597561] </TASK>
[947.598553] —–[ end trace 644721052755541c ]—-

This is because we started using writeback_inodes_sb() to flush delalloc
when committing a transaction (when using -o flushoncommit), in order to
avoid deadlocks with filesystem freeze operations. This change was made
by commit ce8ea7cc6eb313 (“btrfs: don’t call btrfs_start_delalloc_roots
in flushoncommit”). After that change we started producing that warning,
and every now and then a user reports this since the warning happens too
often, it spams dmesg/syslog, and a user is unsure if this reflects any
problem that might compromise the filesystem’s reliability.

We can not just lock the sb->s_umount semaphore before calling
writeback_inodes_sb(), because that would at least deadlock with
filesystem freezing, since at fs/super.c:freeze_super() sync_filesystem()
is called while we are holding that semaphore in write mode, and that can
trigger a transaction commit, resulting in a deadlock. It would also
trigger the same type of deadlock in the unmount path. Possibly, it could
also introduce some other locking dependencies that lockdep would report.

To fix this call try_to_writeback_inodes_sb() instead of
writeback_inodes_sb(), because that will try to read lock sb->s_umount
and then will only call writeback_inodes_sb() if it was able to lock it.
This is fine because the cases where it can’t read lock sb->s_umount
are during a filesystem unmount or during a filesystem freeze – in those
cases sb->s_umount is write locked and sync_filesystem() is called, which
calls writeback_inodes_sb(). In other words, in all cases where we can’t
take a read lock on sb->s_umount, writeback is already being triggered
elsewhere.

An alternative would be to call btrfs_start_delalloc_roots() with a
number of pages different from LONG_MAX, for example matching the number
of delalloc bytes we currently have, in
—-truncated—-