Date:	Mon, 12 Apr 2010 15:15:30 +0200
From:	Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>
To:	Dmitry Monakhov <dmonakhov@...nvz.org>
Cc:	Eric Sandeen <sandeen@...hat.com>,
	ext4 development <linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/3] ext4: don't use quota reservation for speculative
	metadata blocks

> Eric Sandeen <sandeen@...hat.com> writes:
> 
> > Dmitry Monakhov wrote:
> >> Eric Sandeen <sandeen@...hat.com> writes:
> >> 
> >>> Because we can badly over-reserve metadata when we
> >>> calculate worst-case, it complicates things for quota, since
> >>> we must reserve and then claim later, retry on EDQUOT, etc.
> >>> Quota is also a generally smaller pool than fs free blocks,
> >>> so this over-reservation hurts more, and more often.
> >>>
> >>> I'm of the opinion that it's not the worst thing to allow
> >>> metadata to push a user slightly over quota.  This simplifies
> >>> the code and avoids the false quota rejections that result
> >>> from worst-case speculation.
> >> Hm.. Totally agree with issue description. And seem there is no another
> >> solution except yours.
> >> ASAIU alloc_nofail is called from places where it is impossible to fail
> >> an allocation even if something goes wrong.
> >> I ask because currently i'm working on EIO handling in alloc/free calls.
> >> I've found that it is useless to fail claim/free procedures because
> >> caller is unable to handle it properly.
> >> It is impossible to fail following operation
> >> ->writepage
> >>  ->dquot_claim_space (what to do if EIO happens?)
> >
> > Hm, if these start returning EIO then maybe my patch should be modified
> > to treat EDQUOT differently than EIO ... assuming callers can handle
> > the return at all.
> >
> > In other words, make NOFAIL really just mean "don't fail for EDQUOT"
> Yes. agree So we have two types of errors
> 1) expected errors: EDQUOT
> 2) fatal errors: (EIO/ENOSPC/ENOMEM)
> So we need two types of flags:
> 1)FORCE (IMHO it is better name than you proposed) to allow exceed a
>   quota limit
> 2)NOFAIL to allow ignore fatal errors.
> 
> We still need NOFAIL, because for example if something is happens in
> ->write_page()
>  ->dquot_claim()
>      update_quota() -> EIO  /* update disk quota */
>      update_bytes() /* update i_bytes count */
> It is obvious that write_page should fail because it is too late to
> return the error to userspace, so data will probably lost which
> is much more dramatic bug than quota inconsistency.
> So the only options we have is to:
> 1) Do not modify inode->i_bytes and return error which caller will
>    probably ignore. IMHO this is not good because result in
>    incorrect stat()
> 
> 2) do as much as we can (as it happens for now), modify inode->i_bytes
>    and return positive error code to caller.(which signal what error
>    result in quota inconsystency only)
  Yes, agreed that 2) is a better solution.

> This fatal errors handling logic i'll post on top of your patch-set.
> But please change flag name from NOFAIL to FORCE.
  Hmm, do we really need to distinguish between your NOFAIL and FORCE?
I mean there are places where we can handle quota failures (both EDQUOT
or others) and places where we cannot and then we just want to go on as
seamlessly as possible. So NOFAIL flag seems to be enough...
  Now I agree that in theory there can be some caller which might wish
to seamlessly continue on EDQUOT and bail out on EIO but I'm not aware
of such callsite currently so there's no immediate need for the flag.
So Eric's patches seem to be fine to me as they are. What do you think?

								Honza
-- 
Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>
SuSE CR Labs
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