#4184 BLOC Never A: JFFS2 Dirent Anomaly

[Zarro Boogs per Child]

#4184: JFFS2 Dirent Anomaly
-------------------------------+--------------------------------------------
 Reporter:  wmb at firmworks.com  |       Owner:  dwmw2         
     Type:  defect             |      Status:  new           
 Priority:  blocker            |   Milestone:  Never Assigned
Component:  kernel             |     Version:                
 Keywords:                     |    Verified:  0             
-------------------------------+--------------------------------------------
 We have a laptop with a JFFS2 filesystem with lots of bogus dirent nodes.
 OFW q2c28 cannot read from this filesystem, and although Linux can read
 it, certain operations are very slow.  Analysis shows that there is a
 directory /versions/b0rked that contains 6 million dirent nodes for the
 file "joydev.ko".

 David thinks that the problem is caused by a bug in the JFFS2 garbage
 collector; instead of cleaning out the garbage, it sometimes just keeps
 making clones of the same dirent node.

 There are two things that need fixing:
 a) OFW needs to cope with this pathology
 b) JFFS2 needs to stop making it

 I am filing this bug against the kernel because the OFW fix is about to be
 checked in, so there is little point in tracking it against open firmware.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://dev.laptop.org/ticket/4184>
One Laptop Per Child <https://dev.laptop.org>
OLPC bug tracking system