linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v2] Do a proper locking for mmap and block size change

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Message-ID: <20121130022757.GB11004@shiny.int.fusionio.com>
Date:	Thu, 29 Nov 2012 21:27:58 -0500
From:	Chris Mason <chris.mason@...ionio.com>
To:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
CC:	Chris Mason <clmason@...ionio.com>,
	Mikulas Patocka <mpatocka@...hat.com>,
	Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>,
	Jens Axboe <axboe@...nel.dk>,
	Jeff Chua <jeff.chua.linux@...il.com>,
	Lai Jiangshan <laijs@...fujitsu.com>, Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>,
	lkml <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] Do a proper locking for mmap and block size change

On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 07:13:02PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 5:16 PM, Chris Mason <chris.mason@...ionio.com> wrote:
> >
> > I searched through filemap.c for the magic i_size check that would let
> > us get away with ignoring i_blkbits in get_blocks, but its just not
> > there.  The whole fallback-to-buffered scheme seems to rely on
> > get_blocks checking for i_size.  I really hope I'm just missing
> > something.
> 
> So generic_write_checks() limits the size to i_size at for writes (and
> for "isblk").

Great, that's what I was missing.

> 
> Sure, then it will do the buffered part after that, but that should
> all be fine anyway, since by then we use the normal page cache.
> 
> For reads, generic_file_aio_read() will check pos < size, but doesn't
> seem to actually limit the size of the iovec.

I couldn't explain that either.

> 
> I'm not sure why it doesn't just do "iov_shorten()".
> 
> Anyway, having looked at actually passing in the block size to
> get_block(), I can say that is a horrible idea. There are tons of
> get_block functions (for various filesystems), and *none* of them
> really want the block size, because they tend to work on block
> indexes. And if they do want the block size, they'll just get it from
> the inode or sb, since they are filesystems and it's all stable.
> 
> So the *only* of the places that would want the block size is
> fs/block_dev.c. And the callers really already seem to do the i_size
> check, although they sometimes do it badly. And since there are fewer
> callers than there are get_block() implementations, I think we should
> just fix the callers and be done with it.
> 
> Those generic_file_aio_read/write() functions in fs/direct-io.c really
> just seem to be badly written. The fact that they may depend on the
> i_size check in get_blocks() is sad, but I think we should fix it and
> just remove the check for block devices. That's going to simplify so
> much..
> 
> I updated the 'block-dev' branch to have that simpler fs/block_dev.c
> model instead. I'll look at the iovec shortening later. It's a
> non-fast-forward thing, look out!
> 
> (I actually think we should just add the max-offset check to
> rw_copy_check_uvector(). That one already does the MAX_RW_COUNT thing,
> and we could make it do a max_offset check as well).

This is definitely easier, and I can't see any reason not to do it.  I'm
used to get_block being expensive and so it didn't even cross my mind.

We can benchmark things just to make sure.

-chris

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