Re: [Ext2-devel] [BUG?] ext3 0.9.10-2410 - root partition never marked dirty

[Andreas Dilger]

On Sep 24, 2001  14:15 -0700, Ryan Mack wrote:
> It seems that the aforementioned changes in 2.4.10 has prevented the root
> filesystem from having its superblock updated as dirty.  It may be my
> imagination, but since the root fs is already mounted ro when it's
> remounted rw, the superblock isn't being updated with the needs_recovery
> flag.

OK, it's not exactly clear what you are referring to, but:
1) On ext3 the superblock is NEVER marked dirty, because of the journal.
   As long as the journal is running normally, the filesystem will always
   be "clean".
2) There should _not_ be a problem with the needs_recovery flag being set
   from within the kernel.  HOWEVER, attempts to read it from user-space
   may fail because of a disconnect between the buffer cache and the page
   cache.

Now that these issues are in the open (and already being discussed) they
will likely be fixed in a relatively short timeframe.

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger  \ "If a man ate a pound of pasta and a pound of antipasto,
                 \  would they cancel out, leaving him still hungry?"
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/               -- Dogbert