[parted-devel] Possible Race Condition using test code, libparted, and Fedora 12

[Curtis Gedak]

Karel Zak wrote:
>  I guess it's udevd (on new distros). It checks by inotify for
>  filesystem changes to maintain /dev/disk/by-* symlinks.
>   

Thank you Karel for sharing your thoughts on this "failure to inform 
kernel of partition changes" problem.

Due to the intermittent nature of this problem it has been a challenge 
to discover the root cause.  I too suspect a problem with udev, but this 
is just a guess at this time.  So far I have been unable to identify a 
specific commit or udev version that introduced the problem.

Further confusing the issue is that SysRescCD-1.3.4 does not experience 
the problem, but has a udev version between Fedora 12 and 
GParted-Live-0.5.0-3 which exhibit the problem.

Linux kernel and udev versions for some test distributions follow:

     SysRescCD-1.3.4 does not exhibit this problem (based on gentoo):
          linux-2.6.31.9 (with btrfs update from 2.6.32)
         udev-146-r1

     Fedora 12 does exhibit the problem:
          linux-2.6.31.5-127
          udev-145-12

     GParted Live 0.5.0-3 does exhibit the problem (based on debian sid):
          linux-2.6.31-1
          udev-148-2

This is a puzzling situation indeed.

I have been tracking my test results in the following bug report:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=604298


Are you aware of a specific commit or udev version that introduced this 
change?

Do you have some suggestions on how to identify the root cause?

Regards,
Curtis Gedak