On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 03:41:45PM -0800, Eric Sandeen wrote:

From: Martin.Wilck@ts.fujitsu.com

Processes hang forever on a sync-mounted ext2 file system that
is mounted with the ext4 module (default in Fedora 16).

I can reproduce this reliably by mounting an ext2 partition with
"-o sync" and opening a new file an that partition with vim. vim
will hang in "D" state forever.  The same happens on ext4 without
a journal.

I am attaching a small patch here that solves this issue for me.
In the sync mounted case without a journal,
ext4_handle_dirty_metadata() may call sync_dirty_buffer(), which
can't be called with buffer lock held.

Also move mb_cache_entry_release inside lock to avoid race
fixed previously by 8a2bfdcb ext[34]: EA block reference count racing fix
Nonte too that ext2 fixed this same problem in 2006 with
b2f49033 [PATCH] fix deadlock in ext2

Signed-off-by: Martin.Wilck@ts.fujitsu.com
[sandeen@redhat.com: move mb_cache_entry_release before unlock, edit commit msg]
Signed-off-by: Eric Sandeen <redacted>

Thanks, applied.

						- Ted