From: Zhang Yi When zeroing out a written partial block, it is necessary to order the data to prevent exposing stale data on disk. However, if the buffer is unwritten or delayed, it is not allocated as written, so ordering the data is not required. This can prevent strange and unnecessary ordered writes when appending data across a region within a block. Assume we have a 2K unwritten file on a filesystem with 4K blocksize, and buffered write from 3K to 4K. Before this patch, __ext4_block_zero_page_range() would add the range [2k,3k) to the ordered range, and then the JBD2 commit process would write back this block. However, it does nothing since the block is not mapped, this folio will be redirtied and written back agian through the normal write back process. Signed-off-by: Zhang Yi --- fs/ext4/inode.c | 8 ++++++-- 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/fs/ext4/inode.c b/fs/ext4/inode.c index fa579e857baf..fc16a89903b9 100644 --- a/fs/ext4/inode.c +++ b/fs/ext4/inode.c @@ -4104,9 +4104,13 @@ static int __ext4_block_zero_page_range(handle_t *handle, if (ext4_should_journal_data(inode)) { err = ext4_dirty_journalled_data(handle, bh); } else { - err = 0; mark_buffer_dirty(bh); - if (ext4_should_order_data(inode)) + /* + * Only the written block requires ordered data to prevent + * exposing stale data. + */ + if (!buffer_unwritten(bh) && !buffer_delay(bh) && + ext4_should_order_data(inode)) err = ext4_jbd2_inode_add_write(handle, inode, from, length); } -- 2.52.0