vfs: Fix sys_sync() and fsync_super() reliability (version 4)

So far, do_sync() called:
  sync_inodes(0);
  sync_supers();
  sync_filesystems(0);
  sync_filesystems(1);
  sync_inodes(1);

This ordering makes it kind of hard for filesystems as sync_inodes(0) need not
submit all the IO (for example it skips inodes with I_SYNC set) so e.g. forcing
transaction to disk in ->sync_fs() is not really enough. Therefore sys_sync has
not been completely reliable on some filesystems (ext3, ext4, reiserfs, ocfs2
and others are hit by this) when racing e.g. with background writeback. A
similar problem hits also other filesystems (e.g. ext2) because of
write_supers() being called before the sync_inodes(1).

Change the ordering of calls in do_sync() - this requires a new function
sync_blockdevs() to preserve the property that block devices are always synced
after write_super() / sync_fs() call.

The same issue is fixed in __fsync_super() function used on umount /
remount read-only.

[AV: build fixes]

Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>

1 files changed, 9 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/fs/internal.h b/fs/internal.h
index 6d4ef208ef65..343a537ab809 100644
--- a/fs/internal.h
+++ b/fs/internal.h
@@ -71,3 +71,12 @@ extern void chroot_fs_refs(struct path *, struct path *);
  * file_table.c
  */
 extern void mark_files_ro(struct super_block *);
+
+/*
+ * super.c
+ */
+#ifdef CONFIG_BLOCK
+extern void sync_blockdevs(void);
+#else
+static inline void sync_blockdevs(void) { }
+#endif