linux-kernel - Re: aio: bump i_count instead of using igrab

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Message-ID: <x49mxsd2qbu.fsf@segfault.boston.devel.redhat.com>
Date:	Mon, 23 Aug 2010 13:26:13 -0400
From:	Jeff Moyer <jmoyer@...hat.com>
To:	Chris Mason <chris.mason@...cle.com>
Cc:	Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
	npiggin@...nel.dk
Subject: Re: aio: bump i_count instead of using igrab

Chris Mason <chris.mason@...cle.com> writes:

> On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 10:50:31AM -0400, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 10:47:55AM -0400, Chris Mason wrote:
>> > The aio batching code is using igrab to get an extra reference on the
>> > inode so it can safely batch.  igrab will go ahead and take the global
>> > inode spinlock, which can be a bottleneck on large machines doing lots
>> > of AIO.
>> > 
>> > In this case, igrab isn't required because we already have a reference
>> > on the file handle.  It is safe to just bump the i_count directly
>> > on the inode.
>> > 
>> > Benchmarking shows this patch brings IOP/s on tons of flash up by about
>> > 2.5X.
>> 
>> There's some places in XFS where we do the same, and it showed up as a
>> bottle neck before.  Instead of open coding the increment we have
>> a wrapper that includes and assert that the numbers is always positive.
>> 
>> I think we really want a proper helper for general use instead of
>> completly opencoding it.
>> 
>
> Nick, this is about a 1 liner to fs/aio.c replacing igrab with
> atomic_inc directly on the inode reference count.
>
> I know your scalability tree gets rid of the global, but in this case I
> think it still makes sense to avoid the locking completely when the
> caller knows it is safe.  Do you already have something similar hiding
> in the scalability tree?

I opted for the safe route, initially, as I was not too familiar with
the locking.  If it's deemed safe to just do the increment, that works
for me.

Thanks for tracking this down, Chris!

Cheers,
Jeff
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/