Date:   Wed, 16 Aug 2017 07:34:13 -0400
From:   Jeff Layton <jlayton@...hat.com>
To:     NeilBrown <neilb@...e.com>,
        Trond Myklebust <trondmy@...marydata.com>,
        "viro@...iv.linux.org.uk" <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>
Cc:     "linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        "mkoutny@...e.com" <mkoutny@...e.com>,
        "linux-nfs@...r.kernel.org" <linux-nfs@...r.kernel.org>,
        "linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>,
        David Howells <dhowells@...hat.com>,
        Ian Kent <ikent@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: Do we really need d_weak_revalidate???

On Wed, 2017-08-16 at 12:43 +1000, NeilBrown wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 14 2017, Jeff Layton wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 2017-08-14 at 09:36 +1000, NeilBrown wrote:
> > > On Fri, Aug 11 2017, Jeff Layton wrote:
> > > 
> > > > On Fri, 2017-08-11 at 05:55 +0000, Trond Myklebust wrote:
> > > > > On Fri, 2017-08-11 at 14:31 +1000, NeilBrown wrote:
> > > > > > Funny story.  4.5 years ago we discarded the FS_REVAL_DOT superblock
> > > > > > flag and introduced the d_weak_revalidate dentry operation instead.
> > > > > > We duly removed the flag from NFS superblocks and NFSv4 superblocks,
> > > > > > and added the new dentry operation to NFS dentries .... but not to
> > > > > > NFSv4
> > > > > > dentries.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > And nobody noticed.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Until today.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > A customer reports a situation where mount(....,MS_REMOUNT,..) on an
> > > > > > NFS
> > > > > > filesystem hangs because the network has been deconfigured.  This
> > > > > > makes
> > > > > > perfect sense and I suggested a code change to fix the problem.
> > > > > > However when a colleague was trying to reproduce the problem to
> > > > > > validate
> > > > > > the fix, he couldn't.  Then nor could I.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > The problem is trivially reproducible with NFSv3, and not at all with
> > > > > > NFSv4.  The reason is the missing d_weak_revalidate.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > We could simply add d_weak_revalidate for NFSv4, but given that it
> > > > > > has been missing for 4.5 years, and the only time anyone noticed was
> > > > > > when the ommission resulted in a better user experience, I do wonder
> > > > > > if
> > > > > > we need to.  Can we just discard d_weak_revalidate?  What purpose
> > > > > > does
> > > > > > it serve?  I couldn't find one.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Thanks,
> > > > > > NeilBrown
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > For reference, see
> > > > > > Commit: ecf3d1f1aa74 ("vfs: kill FS_REVAL_DOT by adding a
> > > > > > d_weak_revalidate dentry op")
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > To reproduce the problem at home, on a system that uses systemd:
> > > > > > 1/ place (or find) a filesystem image in a file on an NFS filesystem.
> > > > > > 2/ mount the nfs filesystem with "noac" - choose v3 or v4
> > > > > > 3/ loop-mount the filesystem image read-only somewhere
> > > > > > 4/ reboot
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > If you choose v4, the reboot will succeed, possibly after a 90second
> > > > > > timeout.
> > > > > > If you choose v3, the reboot will hang indefinitely in systemd-
> > > > > > shutdown while
> > > > > > remounting the nfs filesystem read-only.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > If you don't use "noac" it can still hang, but only if something
> > > > > > slows
> > > > > > down the reboot enough that attributes have timed out by the time
> > > > > > that
> > > > > > systemd-shutdown runs.  This happens for our customer.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > If the loop-mounted filesystem is not read-only, you get other
> > > > > > problems.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > We really want systemd to figure out that the loop-mount needs to be
> > > > > > unmounted first.  I have ideas concerning that, but it is messy.  But
> > > > > > that isn't the only bug here.
> > > > > 
> > > > > The main purpose of d_weak_revalidate() was to catch the issues that
> > > > > arise when someone changes the contents of the current working
> > > > > directory or its parent on the server. Since '.' and '..' are treated
> > > > > specially in the lookup code, they would not be revalidated without
> > > > > special treatment. That leads to issues when looking up files as
> > > > > ./<filename> or ../<filename>, since the client won't detect that its
> > > > > dcache is stale until it tries to use the cached dentry+inode.
> > > > > 
> > > > > The one thing that has changed since its introduction is, I believe,
> > > > > the ESTALE handling in the VFS layer. That might fix a lot of the
> > > > > dcache lookup bugs that were previously handled by d_weak_revalidate().
> > > > > I haven't done an audit to figure out if it actually can handle all of
> > > > > them.
> > > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > It may also be related to 8033426e6bdb2690d302872ac1e1fadaec1a5581:
> > > > 
> > > >     vfs: allow umount to handle mountpoints without revalidating them
> > > 
> > > You say in the comment for that commit:
> > > 
> > >      but there
> > >     are cases where we do want to revalidate the root of the fs.
> > > 
> > > Do you happen to remember what those cases are?
> > > 
> > 
> > Not exactly, but I _think_ I might have been assuming that we needed to
> > ensure that the inode attrs on the root were up to date after the
> > pathwalk.
> > 
> > I think that was probably wrong. d_revalidate is really intended to
> > ensure that the dentry in question still points to the same inode. In
> > the case of the root of the mount though, we don't really care about the
> > dentry on the server at all. We're attaching the root of the mount to an
> > inode and don't care of the dentry name changes. If we do need to ensure
> > the inode attrs are updated, we'll just revalidate them at that point.
> > 
> > > > 
> > > > Possibly the fact that we no longer try to revalidate during unmount
> > > > means that this is no longer necessary?
> > > > 
> > > > The original patch that added d_weak_revalidate had a reproducer in the
> > > > patch description. Have you verified that that problem is still not
> > > > reproducible when you remove d_weak_revalidate?
> > > 
> > > I did try the reproducer and it works as expected both with and without
> > > d_weak_revalidate.
> > > On reflection, the problem it displayed was caused by d_revalidate()
> > > being called when the dentry name was irrelevant.  We remove that
> > > (fixing the problem) and introduce d_weak_revalidate because we thought
> > > that minimum functionality was still useful.  I'm currently not
> > > convinced that even that is needed.
> > > 
> > > If we discarded d_weak_revalidate(), we could get rid of the special
> > > handling of umount....
> > 
> > I like idea. I say go for it and we can see what (if anything) breaks?
> 
> Getting rid of d_weak_revalidate is easy enough - hardly any users.
> 
> Getting rid of filename_mountpoint() isn't so easy unfortunately.
> autofs4 uses kern_path_mountpoint() - presumably to avoid getting stuck
> in autofs4_d_manage()?  It would be a shame to keep this infrastructure
> around just so that one part of autofs4 can talk to another part of
> autofs4.
> 
> Do you know if the fact that filename_mountpoint() skips ->d_manage is
> important for sys_umount ??
> 
> Thanks,
> NeilBrown
> 

(cc'ing David and Ian)

I'm less familiar with the automounting machinery, but I imagine you
don't really want to go triggering new mounts when your intent is to
unmount something. As long as that doesn't happen I'd think we'd be ok
here.
-- 
Jeff Layton <jlayton@...hat.com>

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