On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 01:46:02PM -0500, Chris Mason wrote: > For the metadata blocks, btrfs gets into a problematic lock inversion > where it needs to record that a block has been written so that it will > be properly recowed when someone tries to change it again. > > Basically the rule for btree_writepage: > > 1) lock the extent buffer (different from the page) > 2) mark the metadata block as written > 3) lock the page > 4) call writepage > > Btrfs does this correctly everywhere it uses writepage, and everyone > else either uses writepages or is PF_MEMALLOC, except for the page > migration code, which just jumps to step 4. > > So, my current fix adds a migrate page hook and adds a warning into the > code to make sure we protest loudly when the block isn't marked as > written. Since this shakedown worked well, I'm changing the warning to > a BUG(). > This sounds to me like you shouldn't bother to use ->writepage for the case that adheres to your locking protocol, but just call into extent_write_full_page directly. ->writepage is supposed to directly callable from the VM, and not require filesystems specific calling conventions. Just calling extent_write_full_page directly and making btree_writepage do the PF_MEMALLOC unconditionally should also fix the page migration corruption. And at the same time making btree_writepage future proof. Btw, magic like the one there currently does need at least a long describing comment. > The check for kupdate in btree_writepages is different. Once we write > something, we have to do a good amount of work in order to modify it > again. The btrfs log commits make sure that we write metadata from time > to time, so we don't really need help from the flusher threads unless. > > We also don't want to waste time writing metadata from > balance_dirty_pages. It'll just make more allocations later as we > wander around and recow things, and it is much more likely to be seeky > than the file IO. So we setup a threshold where we don't bother doing > metadata IO unless there is a good amount pending. > > I'm fine with removing the metadata writepage entirely, it didn't use to > have this many rules and it seems like a better idea to have it not > there at all. for_kupdate only covers a tiny subset of the flusher threads, as it's only set for the older_than_this still writeback. It doesn't cover regular percentage background reclaim not other asynchronous activity from the flusher threads, like wakeup_flusher_threads or the laptop-mode I/O completion. At the very least it should check for_kupdate || for_background to cover all background writeback, which is what the few other uses of for_kupdate already do, but I suspect you simply want to not mark the btree inode as hashed in the inode hash and skip background writeback completely. -- 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/ . Fight unfair telecom policy in Canada: sign http://dissolvethecrtc.ca/ Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>