Zack's Kernel News
Zack's Kernel News
Chronicler Zack Brown reports on the latest news, views, dilemmas, and developments within the Linux kernel community.
Protecting Filesystems from Themselves
Chao Yu recently tried to revert a kernel commit for an F2FS patch. F2FS is a Samsung filesystem for solid state drives. Chao wanted to revert the patch because one of the kernel's generic tests expected F2FS to fail to mount a read-only partition. Ironically, as pointed out by Jaegeuk Kim, F2FS had no trouble mounting such a partition and giving the user full read access to all its data. So the filesystem failed the test … because it succeeded.
Jaegeuk suggested changing the test rather than reverting the patch, but Chao pointed out that the test was actually important for filesystems in general, not just F2FS. Changing the test for that one case, he said, would mean other filesystems might technically pass the test when they really should fail.
Chao also disagreed with Jaegeuk that F2FS handled the case properly. Walking through the code, he identified a certain point at which, he said, the device was then read-only, so that all writes would fail. Therefore, recovered data would not be able to persist beyond the expiration of the page cache. At that point, he said, the user would see stale data instead of the latest system state.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Linux Kernel Project Releases Project Continuity Document
What happens to Linux when there's no Linus? It's a question many of us have asked over the years, and it seems it's also on the minds of the Linux kernel project.
-
Mecha Systems Introduces Linux Handheld
Mecha Systems has revealed its Mecha Comet, a new handheld computer powered by – you guessed it – Linux.
-
MX Linux 25.1 Features Dual Init System ISO
The latest release of MX Linux caters to lovers of two different init systems and even offers instructions on how to transition.
-
Photoshop on Linux?
A developer has patched Wine so that it'll run specific versions of Photoshop that depend on Adobe Creative Cloud.
-
Linux Mint 22.3 Now Available with New Tools
Linux Mint 22.3 has been released with a pair of new tools for system admins and some pretty cool new features.
-
New Linux Malware Targets Cloud-Based Linux Installations
VoidLink, a new Linux malware, should be of real concern because of its stealth and customization.
-
Say Goodbye to Middle-Mouse Paste
Both Gnome and Firefox have proposed getting rid of a long-time favorite Linux feature.
-
Manjaro 26.0 Primary Desktop Environments Default to Wayland
If you want to stick with X.Org, you'll be limited to the desktop environments you can choose.
-
Mozilla Plans to AI-ify Firefox
With a new CEO in control, Mozilla is doubling down on a strategy of trust, all the while leaning into AI.
-
Gnome Says No to AI-Generated Extensions
If you're a developer wanting to create a new Gnome extension, you'd best set aside that AI code generator, because the extension team will have none of that.