[dm-devel] Re: [PATCH 3/3] Add timeout feature

[Arjan van de Ven <arjan infradead org>]

On Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:59:20 +0200
Olaf Frączyk <olaf cbk poznan pl> wrote:

> On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 08:24 -0400, Theodore Tso wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 09, 2008 at 09:49:58PM +1000, Dave Chinner wrote:
> > > (e) none of the above.  The kernel compilation will appear to
> > > pause until the filesystem is unfrozen. No other visible effect
> > > should occur. It will get blocked in a write or filesystem
> > > transaction because the fs is frozen.
> > 
> > So if the process which froze the filesystem accidentally tries
> > writing to a log file (or database file containing the backup
> > information, or whatever) that happens to be on the filesystem that
> > is frozen, that process will get blocked and you end up in a
> > deadlock; did I get that right?
> Where do you see the deadlock?
> The process doesn't have a lock on filesystem or something. You can
> always unfreeze from another process.
> 

if it's one of your main filesystems... good luck starting a shell
without writing a single thing to disk... FAIL.