linux-kernel - Re: [patch v3] splice: fix race with page invalidation

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Date:	Mon, 11 Aug 2008 05:22:30 +0200
From:	"Michael Kerrisk" <mtk.manpages@...il.com>
To:	"Nick Piggin" <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au>, jens.axboe@...cle.com
Cc:	"Jamie Lokier" <jamie@...reable.org>,
	"Miklos Szeredi" <miklos@...redi.hu>,
	torvalds@...ux-foundation.org, akpm@...ux-foundation.org,
	linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-mm@...ck.org
Subject: Re: [patch v3] splice: fix race with page invalidation

Nick, Jens

On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 4:57 AM, Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au> wrote:
> On Tuesday 05 August 2008 01:29, Jamie Lokier wrote:
>> Nick Piggin wrote:
>> > On Saturday 02 August 2008 04:28, Miklos Szeredi wrote:
>> > > On Fri, 1 Aug 2008, Nick Piggin wrote:
>> > > > Well, a) it probably makes sense in that case to provide another mode
>> > > > of operation which fills the data synchronously from the sender and
>> > > > copys it to the pipe (although the sender might just use read/write)
>> > > > And b) we could *also* look at clearing PG_uptodate as an
>> > > > optimisation iff that is found to help.
>> > >
>> > > IMO it's not worth it to complicate the API just for the sake of
>> > > correctness in the so-very-rare read error case.  Users of the splice
>> > > API will simply ignore this requirement, because things will work fine
>> > > on ext3 and friends, and will break only rarely on NFS and FUSE.
>> > >
>> > > So I think it's much better to make the API simple: invalid pages are
>> > > OK, and for I/O errors we return -EIO on the pipe.  It's not 100%
>> > > correct, but all in all it will result in less buggy programs.
>> >
>> > That's true, but I hate how we always (in the VM, at least) just brush
>> > error handling under the carpet because it is too hard :(
>> >
>> > I guess your patch is OK, though. I don't see any reasons it could cause
>> > problems...
>>
>> At least, if there are situations where the data received is not what
>> a common sense programmer would expect (e.g. blocks of zeros, data
>> from an unexpected time in syscall sequence, or something, or just
>> "reliable except with FUSE and NFS"), please ensure it's documented in
>> splice.txt or wherever.
>
> Not quite true. Many filesystems can return -EIO, and truncate can
> partially zero pages.
>
> Basically the man page should note that until the splice API is
> improved, then a) -EIO errors will be seen at the receiever, b)
> the pages can see transient zeroes (this is the case with read(2)
> as well, but splice has a much bigger window), and c) the sender
> does not send a snapshot of data because it can still be modified
> until it is recieved.
>
> c is not too surprising for an asynchronous interface, but it is
> nice to document in case people are expecting COw or something.
> b and c can more or less be worked around by not doing silly things
> like truncating or scribbling on data until reciever really has it.
> a, I argue, should be fixed in API.

Nick, could you come up with a patch to the man page for this?
Something that's ACKable by Jens?

Cheers,

Michael

-- 
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Found a bug? http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html
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