Hi Zheng,

 ---- On Fri, 31 Oct 2025 10:01:23 +0800  Zheng Gu <[email protected]> wrote --- 
 >> On Thu, Oct 30, 2025 at 8:36 PM Li Chen <[email protected]> wrote:From: Li 
 >> Chen <[email protected]>
 >> 
 >> Before this change pcache_meta_find_latest() was copying each
 >> slot directly into meta_ret while scanning. If no valid slot
 >> was found and the function returned NULL, meta_ret still held
 >> whatever was last copied (possibly CRC-bad). Later users
 >> (e.g. cache_segs_init) could mistakenly trust that data.
 > 
 > This functions is * __must_check*, users must check the return value first 
 > before touching the meta_ret, so it should not be a problem here.

Right now, the callers only check the return value with IS_ERR(). If the
function returns NULL instead of an error pointer, a caller like
cache_info_init() will assume that no valid cache_info was found because all 
cache_info are
corrupted. Instead, it will try to init a new one, and then return 0 (success), 
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/md/dm-pcache/cache.c#L61

Later, cache_tail_init() will access cache->cache_info.flags. But in this
path all cache_info may have already been corrupted, and the CRCs are mismatched
(https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/ba36dd5ee6fd4643ebbf6ee6eefcecf0b07e35c7/drivers/md/dm-pcache/pcache_internal.h#L97),
so flags may contain garbage.

This commit fixes this issue by allocating a temp buffer with kvmalloc, so 
meta_ret would never
contain corrupted values.

Regards,

Li​


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