Bug 14474

Summary:	restorecond going crazy on 2.6.31.4 - inotify regression?
Product:	File System	Reporter:	Rafael J. Wysocki (rjw)
Component:	Other	Assignee:	fs_other
Status:	CLOSED CODE_FIX
Severity:	normal	CC:	eparis, florian, hancockrwd
Priority:	P1
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Kernel Version:	2.6.31.4	Subsystem:
Regression:	Yes	Bisected commit-id:
Bug Depends on:
Bug Blocks:	13615

Description Rafael J. Wysocki 2009-10-26 16:58:46 UTC

Subject    : restorecond going crazy on 2.6.31.4 - inotify regression?
Submitter  : Robert Hancock <hancockrwd@gmail.com>
Date       : 2009-10-16 0:03
References : http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=125565159520489&w=4

This entry is being used for tracking a regression from 2.6.30.  Please don't
close it until the problem is fixed in the mainline.

Comment 1 Rafael J. Wysocki 2009-10-27 08:22:55 UTC

On Tuesday 27 October 2009, Robert Hancock wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 1:32 PM, Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@sisk.pl> wrote:
> > This message has been generated automatically as a part of a report
> > of regressions introduced between 2.6.30 and 2.6.31.
> >
> > The following bug entry is on the current list of known regressions
> > introduced between 2.6.30 and 2.6.31.  Please verify if it still should
> > be listed and let me know (either way).
> >
> >
> > Bug-Entry       : http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14474
> > Subject         : restorecond going crazy on 2.6.31.4 - inotify regression?
> > Submitter       : Robert Hancock <hancockrwd@gmail.com>
> > Date            : 2009-10-16 0:03 (11 days old)
> > References      : http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=125565159520489&w=4
> 
> This is definitely reproducible on 2.6.31.4 on CentOS 5.4, I'll likely
> try 2.6.31.5 shortly, but it doesn't seem like any of the 2.6.31.5
> patches touch inotify..

Comment 2 Robert Hancock 2009-11-21 17:28:18 UTC

Problem still exists with 2.6.31.6. According to the mailing list discussion, the actual bug is in restorecond but kernel changes triggered the bug to show up.

Comment 3 Florian Mickler 2010-12-18 01:03:20 UTC

Thx for the update. 
Is this issue solved in the meantime? 

Totally guessing in the dark, but the below commit might have fixed it in 2.6.36-rc1: 

commit 7050c48826d5adb2210bddfb6a67aa13bbe984ed
Author: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
Date:   Thu Dec 17 20:27:10 2009 -0500

    inotify: do not reuse watch descriptors
    
    Prior to 2.6.31 inotify would not reuse watch descriptors until all of
    them had been used at least once.  After the rewrite inotify would reuse
    watch descriptors.  The selinux utility 'restorecond' was found to have
    problems when watch descriptors were reused.  This patch reverts to the
    pre inotify rewrite behavior to not reuse watch descriptors.
    
    Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>