linux-kernel - Re: [RFC v2] block integrity: Stabilize(?) pages during writeback

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Date:	Mon, 25 Apr 2011 17:37:38 -0700
From:	"Darrick J. Wong" <djwong@...ibm.com>
To:	Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>
Cc:	Chris Mason <chris.mason@...cle.com>,
	Mingming Cao <cmm@...ibm.com>,
	Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
	Jeff Layton <jlayton@...hat.com>,
	Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com>,
	Joel Becker <jlbec@...lplan.org>,
	"Martin K. Petersen" <martin.petersen@...cle.com>,
	Jens Axboe <axboe@...nel.dk>,
	linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Mingming Cao <mcao@...ibm.com>,
	linux-scsi <linux-scsi@...r.kernel.org>,
	Dave Hansen <dave@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC v2] block integrity: Stabilize(?) pages during writeback

On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 10:34:34PM +0200, Jan Kara wrote:
> On Fri 22-04-11 08:50:01, Chris Mason wrote:
> > Excerpts from Darrick J. Wong's message of 2011-04-21 20:02:26 -0400:
> > > Hi everyone,
> > > 
> > > I've finally managed to get together a patch that seems to provide stable pages
> > > during writeback, or at least gets us to the point that after several days of
> > > running tests I don't see DIF checksum errors anymore. :)
> > > 
> > > The last two pieces to go into this puzzle were (a) bio_integrity_prep needs to
> > > walk the process tree to find all userland ptes that map to a particular memory
> > > page and revoke write access, and
> > 
> > Hmm, did you need the bio_integrity_prep change for all the filesystems?
> > This should be happening already as part of using page_mkwrite.
>   Or more precisely page_mkclean() should do what you try to do in
> bio_integrity_prep()... It would certainly be interesting (bug) if you
> could write to the page after calling page_mkclean() without page_mkwrite()
> being called.

Hm... in mpage_da_submit_io I see the following sequence of calls:

1. clear_page_dirty_for_io
2. possibly one of: ext4_bio_write_page or block_write_full_page.
   If ext4_bio_write_page, 
   2a. kmem_cache_alloc
   2b. set_page_writeback

Before and after #1, the page is locked but writeback is not set.

Before #2, the page must be locked and writeback must not be set, because both
of those two functions want to set the writeback bit themselves.  However,
ext4_bio_write_page tries to allocate memory with GFP_NOFS, which means it can
sleep (I think).

Unfortunately, ext4_page_mkwrite will check for page locked, wait for page
writeback, and then return the page.  I think it is theoretically possible for
#1 to trigger a page_mkwrite which completes before #2b, right?  In which case
the thread that called mkwrite will think that the page isn't being written
out, and happily scribble on it during writeback.  I could be wrong, but it
seems to me that one has to write-protect the page after setting the writeback
bit.

I guess we could call page_mkclean from bio_integrity_prep, though.

--D
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