On Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 02:22:49PM +0100, Jan Kara wrote: > When a fault to a hole races with write filling the hole, it can happen > that block zeroing in __dax_fault() overwrites the data copied by write. > Since filesystem is supposed to provide pre-zeroed blocks for fault > anyway, just remove the racy zeroing from dax code. The only catch is > with read-faults over unwritten block where __dax_fault() filled in the > block into page tables anyway. For that case we have to fall back to > using hole page now. > > Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx> > --- > fs/dax.c | 9 +-------- > 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 8 deletions(-) > > diff --git a/fs/dax.c b/fs/dax.c > index d496466652cd..50d81172438b 100644 > --- a/fs/dax.c > +++ b/fs/dax.c > @@ -582,11 +582,6 @@ static int dax_insert_mapping(struct inode *inode, struct buffer_head *bh, > error = PTR_ERR(dax.addr); > goto out; > } > - > - if (buffer_unwritten(bh) || buffer_new(bh)) { > - clear_pmem(dax.addr, PAGE_SIZE); > - wmb_pmem(); > - } I agree that we should be dropping these bits of code, but I think they are just dead code that could never be executed? I don't see how we could have hit a race? For the above, dax_insert_mapping() is only called if we actually have a block mapping (holes go through dax_load_hole()), so for ext4 and XFS I think buffer_unwritten() and buffer_new() are always false, so this code could never be executed, right? I suppose that maybe we could get into here via ext2 if BH_New was set? Is that the race? > dax_unmap_atomic(bdev, &dax); > > error = dax_radix_entry(mapping, vmf->pgoff, dax.sector, false, > @@ -665,7 +660,7 @@ int __dax_fault(struct vm_area_struct *vma, struct vm_fault *vmf, > if (error) > goto unlock_page; > > - if (!buffer_mapped(&bh) && !buffer_unwritten(&bh) && !vmf->cow_page) { > + if (!buffer_mapped(&bh) && !vmf->cow_page) { Sure. > if (vmf->flags & FAULT_FLAG_WRITE) { > error = get_block(inode, block, &bh, 1); > count_vm_event(PGMAJFAULT); > @@ -950,8 +945,6 @@ int __dax_pmd_fault(struct vm_area_struct *vma, unsigned long address, > } > > if (buffer_unwritten(&bh) || buffer_new(&bh)) { > - clear_pmem(dax.addr, PMD_SIZE); > - wmb_pmem(); > count_vm_event(PGMAJFAULT); > mem_cgroup_count_vm_event(vma->vm_mm, PGMAJFAULT); > result |= VM_FAULT_MAJOR; I think this whole block is just dead code, right? Can we ever get into here? Same argument applies as from dax_insert_mapping() - if we get this far then we have a mapped buffer, and in the PMD case we know we're on ext4 of XFS since ext2 doesn't do huge page mappings. So, buffer_unwritten() and buffer_new() both always return false, right? Yea...we really need to clean up our buffer flag handling. :) -- 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