On Mon, 2008-05-19 at 13:25 -0700, Andrew Morton wrote: > On Mon, 19 May 2008 12:59:18 -0700 > Mingming Cao <cmm@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > On Mon, 2008-05-19 at 00:37 +0200, Jan Kara wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > > > > This patch fixed a few races between direct IO and kjournald commit > > > > transaction. An unexpected EIO error gets returned to direct IO > > > > caller when it failed to free those data buffers. This could be > > > > reproduced easily with parallel direct write and buffered write to the > > > > same file > > > > > > > > More specific, those races could cause journal_try_to_free_buffers() > > > > fail to free the data buffers, when jbd is committing the transaction > > > > that has those data buffers on its t_syncdata_list or t_locked_list. > > > > journal_commit_transaction() still holds the reference to those > > > > buffers before data reach to disk and buffers are removed from the > > > > t_syncdata_list of t_locked_list. This prevent the concurrent > > > > journal_try_to_free_buffers() to free those buffers at the same time, > > > > but cause EIO error returns back to direct IO. > > > > > > > > With this patch, in case of direct IO and when try_to_free_buffers() failed, > > > > let's waiting for journal_commit_transaction() to finish > > > > flushing the current committing transaction's data buffers to disk, > > > > then try to free those buffers again. > > > If Andrew or Christoph wouldn't beat you for "inventive use" of > > > gfp_mask, I'm fine with the patch as well ;). You can add > > > Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx> > > > > > > > This is less intrusive way to fix this problem. The gfp_mask was marked > > as unused in try_to_free_page(). I looked at filesystems in the kernel, > > there is only a few defined releasepage() callback, and only xfs checks > > the flag(but not used). btrfs is actually using it though. I thought > > about the way you have suggested, i.e.clean up this gfp_mask and and > > replace with a flag. I am not entirely sure if it we need to change the > > address_space_operations and fix all the filesystems for this matter. > > > > Andrew, what do you think? Is this approach acceptable? > > > > <wakes up> > > Please ensure that the final patch is sufficiently well changelogged to > permit me to remain asleep ;) :-) > The ->releasepage semantics are fairly ad-hoc and have grown over time. > It'd be nice to prevent them from becoming vaguer than they are. > > It has been (approximately?) the case that code paths which really care > about having the page released will set __GFP_WAIT (via GFP_KERNEL) > whereas code paths which are happy with best-effort will clear > __GFP_WAIT (with a "0'). And that's reasonsable - __GFP_WAIT here > means "be synchronous" whereas !__GFP_WAIT means "be non-blocking". > This make sense to me. > Is that old convention not sufficient here as well? Two problem areas > I see are mm/vmscan.c and fs/splice.c (there may be others). > > In mm/vmscan.c we probably don't want your new synchronous behaviour > and it might well be deadlockable anyway. No probs, that's what > __GFP_FS is for. > Sure. We could check __GFP_FS and __GFP_WAIT, and that make sense. > In fs/splice.c, reading the comment there I have a feeling that you've > found another bug, and that splice _does_ want your new synchronous > behaviour? Yes, it looks like page_cache_pipe_buf_steal() expects page is free before removeing it by passing the GFP_KERNEL flag, but currently ext3 could fails to releasepage when it called. In fact try_to_release_page() return value is ignored in page_cache_pipe_buf_steal(), should probably checked the failure case. The other caller of try_to_release_page() in mm/splice.c is fallback_migrate_page(), which does want the synchronous behaviour to make sure buffers are dropped. I will reuse the GFP_WAIT and GFP_FS flag in the updated patch. Thanks for your feedback. Mingming > -- > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ext4" in > the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ext4" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
