EXT4 Getting Many Fixes In Linux 4.20, Including For Some Really Old Leaks

Last month I reported on a number of fixes for really old bugs in the EXT4 code with some of the issues dating back to the Linux 2.6 days in the EXT3 file-system code that was carried over to the EXT4 driver. Those fixes are now working their way into the Linux 4.20 stable kernel.

Ted Ts'o sent out a fixes pull request today containing 18 patches. Sixteen of those patches are from Vasily Averin who was nailing these really old bugs/leaks. Of them, Ted noted, "A large number of ext4 bug fixes, mostly buffer and memory leaks on error return cleanup paths."

Many of the patches address buffer leaks in the EXT4 file-system code that have been around since the early Linux 4.x days while some of them even to the Linux 2.6 era kernel code. Fortunately none of the issues appear to be too severe, but great to see them getting cleaned up. Back during the Linux 4.20 merge window there were more fixes that landed for this most common Linux file-system.

Separately, a number of Btrfs fixes were also sent in today for issues ranging from a possible deadline to data corruption due to cloning of an EOF block.