Kernel panic in ext3:dx_probe, help needed

[Duane Griffin]

On 31/07/07, Theodore Tso <tytso at mit.edu> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 29, 2007 at 08:00:16PM -0700, Ulf Zimmermann wrote:
> > Ok, I finally got a complete message of this panic:
> >
> > Assertion failure in dx_probe() at fs/ext3/namei.c:381:
> > "dx_get_limit(entries) == dx_root_limit(dir, root->info.info_length)"
>
> The filesystem got corrupted (and that's probably a device driver
> issue), but ext3 shouldn't have panic'ed the kernel.  The assertion
> needs to be replaced by an ext3_error() call.  I'll whip up a patch;
> thanks for bringing this to my attention.

I've been looking at this very issue recently, following a gentoo bug
report. I have a patch ready that replaces the asserts with a fallback
to a linear directory scan, following the example set by other parts
of that code. I've been waiting to get feedback from the bug reporters
before sending it to you, but if you'd like to take a look at it you
can find it here:

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=183207

Cheers,
Duane.

-- 
"I never could learn to drink that blood and call it wine" - Bob Dylan