linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] sendfile removal

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Date:	Fri, 01 Jun 2007 18:47:19 +0200
From:	Eric Dumazet <dada1@...mosbay.com>
To:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
CC:	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>,
	Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@...cle.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, cotte@...ibm.com, hugh@...itas.com,
	neilb@...e.de, zanussi@...ibm.com, hch@...radead.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] sendfile removal

Linus Torvalds a écrit :
> 
> On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>> Fair enough.  Unix has traditionally not acknowledged the possibility of
>> nonblocking I/O on conventional files, for some odd reason.
> 
> It's not odd at all.
> 
> If you return EAGAIN, you had better have a way to _wait_ for that EAGAIN 
> to go away, otherwise the EAGAIN is just a total waste of time.
> 
> So the rule about EAGAIN is very simple:
>  (a) the file descriptor must be O_NONBLOCK
>  (b) the access must otherwise block
> AND
>  (c) the condition must be something we can wait for with poll/select
> 
> I don't know why people continually ignore that (c) point, even though 
> it's obvious and very very important!
> 
> If you cannot wait for it, tell me why the kernel should _ever_ return 
> EAGAIN? The only option for the user is to just do the operation again 
> immediately.
> 
> And the thing is, neither poll nor select work on regular files. And no, 
> that is _not_ just an implementation issue. It's very fundamental: neither 
> poll nor select get the file offset to wait for!
> 
> And that file offset is _critical_ for a regular file, in a way it 
> obviously is _not_ for a socket, pipe, or other special file. Because 
> without knowing the file offset, you cannot know which page you should be 
> waiting for!
> 
> And no, the file offset is not "f_pos". sendfile(), along with 
> pread/pwrite, uses a totally separate file offset, so if select/poll were 
> to base their decision on f_pos, they'd be _wrong_.
> 
> This really is very fundamental. 
> 
> Now, you can argue that you can always just return -EAGAIN anyway, but 
> then the calling process will basically be busy-looping, calling 
> sendfile() (or splice()) over and over again. That's _horrible_. It's much 
> better to just not return EAGAIN, and sleep like a good process should!
> 
> So there's a few things to take away from this:
> 
>  - regular file access MUST NOT return EAGAIN just because a page isn't 
>    in the cache. Doing so is simply a bug. No ifs, buts or maybe's about 
>    it!
> 
>    Busy-looping is NOT ACCEPTABLE!

yes, very true, but then some apps do this (and sometimes depends on yield())


> 
>  - you *could* make some alternative conventions:
> 
> 	(a) you could make O_NONBLOCK mean that you'll at least 
> 	    guarantee that you *start* the IO, and while you never return 
> 	    EAGAIN, you migth validly return a _partial_ result!
> 
> 	(b) variation on (a): it's ok to return EAGAIN if _you_ were the 
> 	    one who started the IO during this particular time aroudn the 
> 	    loop. But if you find a page that isn't up-to-date yet, and 
> 	    you didn't start the IO, you *must* wait for it, so that you 
> 	    end up returning EAGAIN atmost once! Exactly because 
> 	    busy-looping is simply not acceptable behaviour!
> 
> I have to admit that I didn't look at what raw splice() itself does these 
> days. I would not be surprised if Jens also didn't realize this very 
> fundamental issue. It seems too easy to miss, because people think 
> that EAGAIN stands on its own, and don't realize that EAGAIN must be 
> paired with select/poll to make sense.
> 

Right now, splice() has one SPLICE_F_NONBLOCK flag, and this flag is applied 
on both sides (in & out)

So either :

1) We separate the flag into two flags NONBLOCK_IN & NONBLOCK_OUT, so that the 
application is free to chose to busy-loop/yield if it wants.

2) We ignore NONBLOCK flag for regular files in splice() (and sendfile()), 
just following current facto

3) We consider select()/poll()/splice() can be extended to regular files on 
[f_pos] (select() and related functions have a meaning on non-seekable files, 
so consider it can be extended on files only on current file pos)


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