linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] mm/mincore: allow for making sys

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Date:   Wed, 9 Jan 2019 10:25:43 -0800
From:   Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:     Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com>
Cc:     Jiri Kosina <jikos@...nel.org>,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
        Jann Horn <jannh@...gle.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Michal Hocko <mhocko@...e.com>, Linux-MM <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
        kernel list <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Linux API <linux-api@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm/mincore: allow for making sys_mincore() privileged

On Tue, Jan 8, 2019 at 8:39 PM Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com> wrote:
>
> FWIW, I just realised that the easiest, most reliable way to
> invalidate the page cache over a file range is simply to do a
> O_DIRECT read on it.

If that's the case, that's actually an O_DIRECT bug.

It should only invalidate the caches on write.

On reads, it wants to either _flush_ any direct caches before the
read, or just take the data from the caches. At no point is
"invalidate" a valid model.

Of course, I'm not in the least bit shocked if O_DIRECT is buggy like
this. But looking at least at the ext4 routine, the read just does

        ret = filemap_write_and_wait_range(mapping, iocb->ki_pos,

and I don't see any invalidation.

Having read access to a file absolutely should *not* mean that you can
flush caches on it. That's a write op.

Any filesystem that invalidates the caches on read is utterly buggy.

Can you actually point to such a thing? Let's get that fixed, because
it's completely wrong regardless of this whole mincore issue.

               Linus