Silent Data Loss in Linux Kernel Finally Fixed After Three Years
4 Articles
4 Articles
Silent Data Loss in Linux Kernel Finally Fixed After Three Years
A three-year-old bug in Linux memory management silently discarded user data under transparent huge pages, MADV_FREE, and cgroup pressure. The one-line fix merged this week for 7.3 and stable kernels resolves production data loss reported by Polars users.
Linux has just corrected one of those errors that any developer fears especially: the data could disappear without the system being hung or necessarily showing a clear error. The failure was active since July 2023, as it reached the public versions from Linux 6.6. It is known that it had caused actual data losses among users of Polars, a well-known data analysis library. What is most surprising about all of this, as we read in Phoronix, is the c…
A bug was discovered in the Linux kernel, which had been present for three years and could have led to the loss of user data. A fix was released as part of Linux 7.3-rc3. The issue was reported in early September. Full version of the page: https://ithardware.pl/aktualnosci/linux_aktualacja_blad_utrata_danych-54024.html
A Linux kernel failure, introduced in 2023 and present from Linux 6.6, could quietly rule out application scripts when THP, MADV_FREE and strong memory pressure coincided. The problem came into production and affected Polars users, but a single-line patch was already incorporated into the development branch.
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