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Message-Id: <1219129998.10800.362.camel@twins>
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:13:18 +0200
From: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>
To: Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc: Ian Campbell <ijc@...lion.org.uk>,
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
stable@...r.kernel.org, Jaya Kumar <jayakumar.lkml@...il.com>,
Nick Piggin <npiggin@...e.de>, Hugh Dickins <hugh@...itas.com>,
Johannes Weiner <hannes@...urebad.de>,
Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@...p.org>,
Kel Modderman <kel@...ku42.de>,
Markus Armbruster <armbru@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] fbdefio: add set_page_dirty handler to deferred IO FB
On Mon, 2008-08-18 at 23:38 -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 07:02:45 +0100 Ian Campbell <ijc@...lion.org.uk> wrote:
>
> > Fixes kernel BUG at lib/radix-tree.c:473.
> >
> > Previously the handler was incidentally provided by tmpfs but this was
> > removed with:
> >
> > commit 14fcc23fdc78e9d32372553ccf21758a9bd56fa1
> > Author: Hugh Dickins <hugh@...itas.com>
> > Date: Mon Jul 28 15:46:19 2008 -0700
> >
> > tmpfs: fix kernel BUG in shmem_delete_inode
> >
> > relying on this behaviour was incorrect in any case and the BUG
> > also appeared when the device node was on an ext3 filesystem.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Ian Campbell <ijc@...lion.org.uk>
> > Acked-by: Jaya Kumar <jayakumar.lkml@...il.com>
> > Acked-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@...e.de>
> > Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>
> > Cc: Jaya Kumar <jayakumar.lkml@...il.com>
> > Cc: Nick Piggin <npiggin@...e.de>
> > Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>
> > Cc: Hugh Dickins <hugh@...itas.com>
> > Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@...urebad.de>
> > Cc: Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@...p.org>
> > Cc: Kel Modderman <kel@...ku42.de>
> > Cc: Markus Armbruster <armbru@...hat.com>
> > Cc: stable@...r.kernel.org [14fcc23fd is in 2.6.25.14 and 2.6.26.1]
> > ---
> > drivers/video/fb_defio.c | 12 ++++++++++++
> > 1 files changed, 12 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/drivers/video/fb_defio.c b/drivers/video/fb_defio.c
> > index 59df132..214bb7c 100644
> > --- a/drivers/video/fb_defio.c
> > +++ b/drivers/video/fb_defio.c
> > @@ -114,11 +114,23 @@ static struct vm_operations_struct fb_deferred_io_vm_ops = {
> > .page_mkwrite = fb_deferred_io_mkwrite,
> > };
> >
> > +static int fb_deferred_io_set_page_dirty(struct page *page)
> > +{
> > + if (!PageDirty(page))
> > + SetPageDirty(page);
> > + return 0;
> > +}
>
> <searches, finds the thread. "kernel BUG at lib/radix-tree.c:473!">
>
> Is there actually any benefit in setting these pages dirty? Or should
> this be an empty function? I see claims in the above thread that this
> driver uses PG_dirty for optimising writeback but I can't immediately
> locate any code which actually does that.
>
> > +static const struct address_space_operations fb_deferred_io_aops = {
> > + .set_page_dirty = fb_deferred_io_set_page_dirty,
> > +};
> > +
> > static int fb_deferred_io_mmap(struct fb_info *info, struct vm_area_struct *vma)
> > {
> > vma->vm_ops = &fb_deferred_io_vm_ops;
> > vma->vm_flags |= ( VM_IO | VM_RESERVED | VM_DONTEXPAND );
> > vma->vm_private_data = info;
> > + vma->vm_file->f_mapping->a_ops = &fb_deferred_io_aops;
> > return 0;
> > }
>
> Seems a bit odd to rewrite the address_space_operations at mmap()-time.
> A filesystem will usually do this on the inode when it is first being
> set up, when no other thread of control can be looking at it.
>
> grep 'if .*[-]>a_ops' */*.c
>
> and you'll see that lots of code assumes that a_ops doesn't get
> swizzled around (to contain a bunch of NULL pointers!) under its feet.
> Maybe none of those code paths are applicable to the /dev/fb0 inode,
> but it would be painful to work out which paths _are_ applicable and to
> verify that they're all safe wrt a_ops getting whisked away.
>
> Rewriting page->mapping within the vm_operations_struct.fault handler
> seems a bit suspect for similar reasons.
>
> I suspect that we just shouldn't be pretending that this is a regular
> anon/pagecache page to this extent. Maybe a suitable fix would be to
> teach fb_deferred_io_fault() to instantiate the pte itself
> (vm_insert_page()) and then return VM_FAULT_NOPAGE?
>
> I assume there's a reason why we aren't VM_IO/VM_RESERVED/PG_reserved in
> here.
IIRC there is the requirement to mmap the framebuffer from multiple
processes, so we need a shared mapping - this can be done using
vm_insertpage() if I understand the thing correctly.
We also need the fault on write, vma_want_writenotify() will generally
fail on VM_INSERTPAGE pages, except when you set a page_mkwrite()
handler, so here we're good too.
However, we also need page_mkclean() to work, and that requires rmap -
which if memory serves me, vm_insertpage() does not do.
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