I recently found out that write caching in samba sometimes leads to
file corruption (the setup program for Sophos Antivirus generates
corrupted files when making a "central installation" on a Samba
share).
This morning I tracked down the place in the Samba code that leads to
corruption. Here is what happened to me:
"write cache size" is 8192 bytes. A client opens a new file and writes
byte no. 30959. This byte is cached. Then the program write byte
no. 61919 which is written directly to the disk, since the cache
doesn't go that far. The client then writes bytes no. 0 through
61920. Since these bytes don't fit into the cache they are written
directly to the disk. However, the cached byte at position 30959 is
not discarded. When this byte is later written to the disk, the file
will get corrupted.
The patch below detects this situation and discards the cached
byte(s). I guess that some profiling code should also be added at some
time. The patch is against version 2.2.5.
Perhaps you should warn users of current versions against using write
caching.
I believe that this bug is the same as bug no. 24502 submitted by
Henrik Qwinto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
Best regards, and thank you for making Samba,
Rasmus
--
Rasmus Borup Hansen, system adm. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Institute for Mathematical Sciences Phone: +45 353 20759
Universitetsparken 5 Cell phone: +45 20829308
DK-2100 Ø, Denmark Office: E208
--- samba-2.2.5/source/smbd/fileio.c.orig Thu Oct 3 10:41:36 2002
+++ samba-2.2.5/source/smbd/fileio.c Thu Oct 3 12:45:14 2002
@@ -438,7 +438,21 @@
if ( n <= wcp->alloc_size && n > wcp->data_size) {
cache_flush_needed = True;
} else {
+
ssize_t ret = real_write_file(fsp, data, pos, n);
+
+ /*
+ * If the write overlaps the entire
+ * cache, then discard the cache.
+ */
+
+ if ( (pos <= wcp->offset) &&
+ (pos + n >= wcp->offset + wcp->data_size) ) {
+ DEBUG(9,("discarding invalidated write cache:
+fd = %d, off=%.0f, size=%u\n",
+ fsp->fd, (double)wcp->offset,
+ (unsigned int)wcp->data_size ));
+ wcp->data_size = 0;
+ }
DO_PROFILE_INC(writecache_direct_writes);
if (ret == -1)
--
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