In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: jbd2: stop waiting for space when jbd2_cleanup_journal_tail() returns error In __jbd2_log_wait_for_space(), we might call jbd2_cleanup_journal_tail() to recover some journal space. But if an error occurs while executing jbd2_cleanup_journal_tail() (e.g., an EIO), we don't stop waiting for free space right away, we try other branches, and if j_committing_transaction is NULL (i.e., the tid is 0), we will get the following complain: ============================================ JBD2: I/O error when updating journal superblock for sdd-8. __jbd2_log_wait_for_space: needed 256 blocks and only had 217 space available __jbd2_log_wait_for_space: no way to get more journal space in sdd-8 ------------[ cut here ]------------ WARNING: CPU: 2 PID: 139804 at fs/jbd2/checkpoint.c:109 __jbd2_log_wait_for_space+0x251/0x2e0 Modules linked in: CPU: 2 PID: 139804 Comm: kworker/u8:3 Not tainted 6.6.0+ #1 RIP: 0010:__jbd2_log_wait_for_space+0x251/0x2e0 Call Trace: <TASK> add_transaction_credits+0x5d1/0x5e0 start_this_handle+0x1ef/0x6a0 jbd2__journal_start+0x18b/0x340 ext4_dirty_inode+0x5d/0xb0 __mark_inode_dirty+0xe4/0x5d0 generic_update_time+0x60/0x70 [...] ============================================ So only if jbd2_cleanup_journal_tail() returns 1, i.e., there is nothing to clean up at the moment, continue to try to reclaim free space in other ways. Note that this fix relies on commit 6f6a6fda2945 ("jbd2: fix ocfs2 corrupt when updating journal superblock fails") to make jbd2_cleanup_journal_tail return the correct error code.