On Wed, 2022-09-07 at 13:55 +0000, Trond Myklebust wrote: > On Wed, 2022-09-07 at 09:12 -0400, Jeff Layton wrote: > > On Wed, 2022-09-07 at 08:52 -0400, J. Bruce Fields wrote: > > > On Wed, Sep 07, 2022 at 08:47:20AM -0400, Jeff Layton wrote: > > > > On Wed, 2022-09-07 at 21:37 +1000, NeilBrown wrote: > > > > > On Wed, 07 Sep 2022, Jeff Layton wrote: > > > > > > +The change to \fIstatx.stx_ino_version\fP is not atomic with > > > > > > respect to the > > > > > > +other changes in the inode. On a write, for instance, the > > > > > > i_version it usually > > > > > > +incremented before the data is copied into the pagecache. > > > > > > Therefore it is > > > > > > +possible to see a new i_version value while a read still > > > > > > shows the old data. > > > > > > > > > > Doesn't that make the value useless? > > > > > > > > > > > > > No, I don't think so. It's only really useful for comparing to an > > > > older > > > > sample anyway. If you do "statx; read; statx" and the value > > > > hasn't > > > > changed, then you know that things are stable. > > > > > > I don't see how that helps. It's still possible to get: > > > > > > reader writer > > > ------ ------ > > > i_version++ > > > statx > > > read > > > statx > > > update page cache > > > > > > right? > > > > > > > Yeah, I suppose so -- the statx wouldn't necessitate any locking. In > > that case, maybe this is useless then other than for testing purposes > > and userland NFS servers. > > > > Would it be better to not consume a statx field with this if so? What > > could we use as an alternate interface? ioctl? Some sort of global > > virtual xattr? It does need to be something per-inode. > > I don't see how a non-atomic change attribute is remotely useful even > for NFS. > > The main problem is not so much the above (although NFS clients are > vulnerable to that too) but the behaviour w.r.t. directory changes. > > If the server can't guarantee that file/directory/... creation and > unlink are atomically recorded with change attribute updates, then the > client has to always assume that the server is lying, and that it has > to revalidate all its caches anyway. Cue endless readdir/lookup/getattr > requests after each and every directory modification in order to check > that some other client didn't also sneak in a change of their own. > We generally hold the parent dir's inode->i_rwsem exclusively over most important directory changes, and the times/i_version are also updated while holding it. What we don't do is serialize reads of this value vs. the i_rwsem, so you could see new directory contents alongside an old i_version. Maybe we should be taking it for read when we query it on a directory? Achieving atomicity with file writes though is another matter entirely. I'm not sure that's even doable or how to approach it if so. Suggestions? -- Jeff Layton <jlayton@xxxxxxxxxx>
