If the journal doesn't abort when it gets an IO error in file data
blocks, the file data corruption will spread silently.  Because
most of applications and commands do buffered writes without fsync(),
they don't notice the IO error.  It's scary for mission critical
systems.  On the other hand, if the journal aborts whenever it gets
an IO error in file data blocks, the system will easily become
inoperable.  So this patch introduces a filesystem option to
determine whether it aborts the journal or just call printk() when
it gets an IO error in file data.

If you mount an ext4 fs with data_err=abort option, it aborts on file
data write error.  If you mount it with data_err=ignore, it doesn't
abort, just call printk().  data_err=ignore is the default.

Here is the corresponding patch of the ext3 version:
http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux-kernel/2008/9/9/3239374Signed-off-by: Hidehiro Kawai <hidehiro.kawai.ez@hitachi.com>
Signed-off-by: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>