On Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:08:14 -0400 Rik van Riel <riel@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 06/14/2010 09:45 PM, Andrew Morton wrote: > > On Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:16:29 -0400 Rik van Riel<riel@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > >> Would it be hard to add a "please flush this file" > >> way to call the filesystem flushing threads? > > > > Passing the igrab()bed inode into the flusher threads would fix the > > iput_final() problems, as long as the alloc_pages() caller never blocks > > indefinitely waiting for the work which the flusher threads are doing. > > > > Otherwise we get (very hard-to-hit) deadlocks where the alloc_pages() > > caller holds VFS locks and is waiting for the flusher threads while all > > the flusher threads are stuck under iput_final() waiting for those VFS > > locks. > > > > That's fixable by not using igrab()/iput(). You can use lock_page() to > > pin the address_space. Pass the address of the locked page across to > > the flusher threads so they don't try to lock it a second time, or just > > use trylocking on that writeback path or whatever. > > Any thread that does not have __GFP_FS set in its gfp_mask > cannot wait for the flusher to complete. This is regardless > of the mechanism used to kick the flusher. mm... kinda. A bare order-zero __GFP_WAIT allocation can still wait forever, afaict. > Then again, those threads cannot call ->writepage today > either, so we should be fine keeping that behaviour. I'm not sure. iput_final() can take a lot of locks, both VFS and heaven knows what within the individual filesystems. Is it the case that all allocations which occur under all of those locks is always !__GFP_FS? Hard to say... > Threads that do have __GFP_FS in their gfp_mask can wait > for the flusher in various ways. Maybe the lock_page() > method can be simplified by having the flusher thread > unlock the page the moment it gets it, and then run the > normal flusher code? Well, _something_ has to pin the address_space. A single locked page will do. > The pageout code (in shrink_page_list) already unlocks > the page anyway before putting it back on the relevant > LRU list. It would be easy enough to skip that unlock > and let the flusher thread take care of it. Once that page is unlocked, we can't touch *mapping - its inode can be concurrently reclaimed. Although I guess the technique in handle_write_error() can be reused. -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxx For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>