On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 09:39:07AM +1000, NeilBrown wrote: > There is no reason to be so gloomy. RTFS. > The VFS would provide a generic_do_last() (or whatever) which handles > everything correctly for local filesystems which keep the dcache precisely > consistent and use it for all the valuable locking it can provide. > generic_to_last() would call into other filesystem entry points just like the > current do_last() does. It wouldn't bother with 'revalidation' though. > > Then there might be a "generic_network_do_last()" which does minimal if any > checking because the server will do all that, and just calls back to the > filesystem depending on which particular operation is happening - mkdir, or > unlink or whatever. RTFPOSIX. Semantics of the last step on open is very different from the rest due to symlink handling. And do_last() has nothing whatsoever with mkdir() or unlink(). _Those_ are much simpler and don't go anywhere near that rats' nest of horrors. Seriously, read the damn thing. It *is* horrible, all right, but shifting it inside NFS won't help you at all. Especially since you have NFSv3 to cope with, which will take care of bringing in every sodding bit NFSv4 might evade (for non-directories, that is - for directories you get the full shitpile in your face, NFSv4 or not). And no, server will _not_ "do all that". Again, mkdir and unlink are (almost) trivial (unlink less so, due to NFS-specific shite). The real horrors are on open(). I would be a lot less gloomy about discussing just passing the buck to filesystems, starting with NFS, if NFS folks (you, in particular) had bothered to figure out what the existing code _does_ and why is it doing what it's doing. So far you have not - not even on the level of "which functions are hit in which syscall", let alone what those functions are doing. And yes, the documentation of the whole thing is piss-poor. What we have there right now is a weird mix of bits and pieces referring to very different periods of evolution. Flat-out contradicting each other *and* the code. I know. Believe me, I know. Fuck, right now the call graph for that thing _finally_ fits into A4. Four years ago it took a goddamned A_1_. As in, eight A4 sheets taped together. Yes, really. At least now we finally have a reasonable chance of getting that sucker into understandable shape and maybe even getting more folks to understand what that code is doing. Which, unfortunately, _is_ a requirement for serious reworks of that code. Frankly, the burden of keeping dcache consistent is the least of the PITA in there. -- 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
