LXer: This week at LWN: A nasty file corruption bug - fixed
 

Published at LXer:

The December 20 LWN Kernel Page contained an article about a file corruption bug generally (but not exclusively) seen with ext3 filesystems. Certain applications which have unusual patterns of access to memory-mapped files could, at times, see gaps where data had not made it all the way to the disk. The rtorrent tool was one such application; other test cases were found (and developed) as the hunt for this problem intensified. The problem is now solved, but it offers some interesting lessons on how this kind of subtle bug can come about - and how to get it fixed.

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