Date:	Fri, 31 Dec 2010 03:39:50 -0800
From:	Joel Becker <Joel.Becker@...cle.com>
To:	Nick Piggin <npiggin@...il.com>
Cc:	linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org,
	ocfs2-devel@....oracle.com
Subject: Re: Confused by commit 56a76f [fs: fix page_mkwrite error cases in
 core code and btrfs]

On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 10:16:35PM +1100, Nick Piggin wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 10:00 PM, Joel Becker <jlbec@...lplan.org> wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 08:31:41PM +1100, Nick Piggin wrote:
> >> On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 10:29 AM, Joel Becker <Joel.Becker@...cle.com> wrote:
> 
> >> The better way to do this would be to just return VM_FAULT_NOPAGE
> >> in any case you need the VM to retry the fault. When you reach the
> >> business end of your handler, you want to hold the page locked, after
> >> you verify it is correct, and return that to the fault handler.
> >
> >        This is going to be hard.  Our write_end() assumes it must
> > unlock the pages (which is normal behavior for write(2)), but in the
> > page_mkwrite() case we need to avoid the unlock to follow your
> > recommendation (we use our write_begin/write_end pair to trigger any
> > allocation or zeroing needed before the page is writable).
> 
> Yes that would be the best option. It is possible to use the unlocked
> return, but that still gives possibility of races in some cases. Consider

	Yes, I am aware of that.
 
> Basically it would be nice for all filesystems to move to this convention
> so we can remove the old cruft.

	I can appreciate that.  And you've just answered the "Do you
want us to get there, or are minor faults in the old-0-style OK?"
question.
 
> >        The find_or_create_page() is deep at the meat of the function,
> > not the cursory check at the top.  The idea is that at this point,
> > find_or_create_page() will return a locked page that must, by
> > definition, be part of the correct mapping.
> 
> But you must still handle failures there, because find_or_create_page
> may return -ENOMEM. So just lock the page, recheck the mapping
> there, and then do exactly the same error handling.

	Of course it can error, but error is different than clean
restart.  Though cleanup should be the same; I'm looking at our code
trying to convince myself that this is so ;-)  Btw, -ENOMEM is that OOM
fault error, right? ;-)

> >        If the VM is rechecking the pte after we return from
> > page_mkwrite(), won't it see any new page created?
> 
> But the point of page_mkwrite is a dirty notifier for the fs. If this new
> different page was installed due to say truncate then a read-only
> fault, the filesystem would miss the notification. So it just does the
> simple thing and retries the whole sequence (if needed).

	Fair enough, even if we caused the new page and thus are already
notified ;-)
	Essentially, you would really like us (and ext4, and gfs2, etc)
to start returning VM_FAULT_NOPAGE for any place we aren't sure what
happened to our page, VM_FAULT_OOM when we get an -ENOMEM, and
VM_FAULT_LOCKED for all successful operations.  That the long and short
of it?  Thank you for helping me understand your plan for this code.
	Btw, what not use VM_FAULT_RETRY for "I'd like you to retry"?
Especially since the comment for NOPAGE doesn't read anything like its
actual behavior.

Joel

-- 

"Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate." 
        - Thomas Jones

Joel Becker
Senior Development Manager
Oracle
E-mail: joel.becker@...cle.com
Phone: (650) 506-8127
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