linux-kernel - Re: [RFC] get_write_access()/deny_write_access() without inode->i

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Date:	Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:42:11 +0100
From:	Al Viro <viro@...IV.linux.org.uk>
To:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:	linux-arch@...r.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC] get_write_access()/deny_write_access() without
 inode->i_lock

On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 09:22:32AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 9:13 AM, Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> >
> > Er... ?The current mainline does atomic_read() followed by atomic_inc(),
> > so we get the same thing (plus the spin_lock()/spin_unlock()), don't we?
> 
> Yes. Unless the spinlock is in the same cacheline. No reason not to
> fix that, though.
> 
> Of course, if the "ETXTBUSY" case is the common case (which I doubt),
> then not doing the write at all would be the optimal case. But I doubt
> that case is even worth really worrying about ;)

It isn't, unless your box is spinning in attempts to do something like
opening /bin/sh for write.  In which case you've got worse problems ;-)
> 
> > For get_write_access() it's probably the right assumption for everything but
> > /dev/tty*; for deny_write_access() it's not - a lot of binaries are run by
> > more than one process...
> 
> Note the fact that EVEN IF WE GUESS INCORRECTLY, performance is likely
> better by guessing rather than reading, unless you know the thing is
> already in the local CPU cache.
> 
> Doing the loop twice instead of once is still *much* faster than an
> extra cache transaction that goes to the bus (or L3 or whatever).
> 
> > FWIW, I wonder what will the things look like on ll/sc architectures;
> 
> There are no ll/sc architectures worth worrying about, so I don't
> think that's the primary concern.  That said, I don't disagree with
> creating a "atomic_inc_unless_negative()" helper.

OK...  Let me see if I got it right:
static inline int atomic_inc_unless_negative(atomic_t *p)
{
	int v, v1;
	for (v = 0; v >= 0; v = v1) {
		v1 = atomic_cmpxchg(p, v, v + 1);
		if (v == v1)
			return 1;
	}
	return 0;
}
with get_write_access(inode) becoming
	return atomic_inc_unless_negative(&inode->i_writecount) ? 0 : -ETXTBUSY;
and similar for atomic_dec_unless_positive()/deny_write_access()?

BTW, atomic_add_unless/atomic_inc_not_zero is done as read/cmpxchg on
everything I've checked, including alpha and sparc.  I suspect that
it's seriously suboptimal there...
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