On Fri, 9 Feb 2007 11:14:55 -0800 Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 14:07:46 +0100 (CET) Nick Piggin <npiggin@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > > +void page_zero_new_buffers(struct page *page, unsigned from, unsigned to) > > +{ > > + unsigned int block_start, block_end; > > + struct buffer_head *head, *bh; > > + > > + BUG_ON(!PageLocked(page)); > > + if (!page_has_buffers(page)) > > + return; > > + > > + bh = head = page_buffers(page); > > + block_start = 0; > > + do { > > + block_end = block_start + bh->b_size; > > + > > + if (buffer_new(bh)) { > > + if (block_end > from && block_start < to) { > > + if (!PageUptodate(page)) { > > + unsigned start, end; > > + void *kaddr; > > + > > + start = max(from, block_start); > > + end = min(to, block_end); > > + > > + kaddr = kmap_atomic(page, KM_USER0); > > + memset(kaddr+start, 0, block_end-end); > > + flush_dcache_page(page); > > + kunmap_atomic(kaddr, KM_USER0); > > + set_buffer_uptodate(bh); > > + } > > I don't see how this differs from the previous attempts to solve the > deadlock via atomic copt_from_user(). Here we temporarily zero out the > pagecache page then block_perform_write() unlocks the page. So another > thread can come in, read the page and see the temporary zeroes? > > If so, that might be preventable by leaving the buffer nonuptodate. oh, OK, it was buffer_new(), so zeroes are the right thing for a reader to see. But if it wasn't buffer_new() then the appropriate thing for the reader to see is what's on the disk. But __block_prepare_write() won't read a buffer which is fully-inside the write area from disk. And that's seemingly OK, because if a reader gets in there after the short copy, that reader will see the non-uptodate buffer and will populate it from disk. But doing that will overwrite the data which the write() caller managed to copy into the page before it took a fault. And that's not OK because block_perform_write() does iovec_iterator_advance(i, copied) in this case and hence will not rerun the copy after acquiring the page lock? - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html