Re: invalidate: busy-buffer

[Andreas Dilger]

On Feb 10, 2002  14:12 +1100, Andrew Clausen wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 04:05:41PM -0600, Larry Holish wrote:
> > When I run the command:
> > 
> > # /sbin/parted /dev/hda print
> > 
> > I get hundreds of these 'invalidate: busy-buffer' messages, before and
> > after what looks like normal 'print' output (also in syslog).  I'm
> > hesitating on going any farther with parted, until I figure out what the
> > problem is.  Any ideas?
> 
> I still haven't figured out what this is...
> I think it's a kernel issue.  It seems to only happen when
> parted plays with CDROMs, etc.?

No, this is a recent "addition" to the kernel.  Basically, it happens
when you try BLKFSLBUF on a device that has locked and/or dirty buffers
that cannot be flushed.  On any ext2/ext3 (or probably other filesystems)
the kernel is holding buffers busy that cannot be dropped.

In the past, these buffers would silently be kept when BLKFLSBUF is called.
With new kernels you get a warning.  The actual behaviour is not any
different.

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2resize/
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/