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

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Date:   Thu, 17 Jan 2019 16:51:44 +1200
From:   Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:     Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>
Cc:     Jiri Kosina <jikos@...nel.org>,
        Dominique Martinet <asmadeus@...ewreck.org>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>,
        Josh Snyder <joshs@...flix.com>,
        Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com>,
        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 Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 9:37 AM Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org> wrote:
>
> Your patch 3/3 just removes the test.  Am I right in thinking that it
> doesn't need to be *moved* because the existing test after !PageUptodate
> catches it?

That's the _hope_.

That's the simplest patch I can come up with as a potential solution.
But it's possible that there's some nasty performance regression
because somebody really relies on not even triggering read-ahead, and
we might need to do some totally different thing.

So it may be that somebody has a case that really wants something
else, and we'd need to move the RWF_NOWAIT test elsewhere and do
something slightly more complicated. As with the mincore() change,
maybe reality doesn't like the simplest fix...

> Of course, there aren't any tests for RWF_NOWAIT in xfstests.  Are there
> any in LTP?

RWF_NOWAIT is actually _fairly_ new.  It was introduced "only" about
18 months ago and made it into 4.13.

Which makes me hopeful there aren't a lot of people who care deeply.

And starting readahead *may* actually be what a RWF_NOWAIT read user
generally wants, so for all we know it might even improve performance
and/or allow new uses. With the "start readahead but don't wait for
it" semantics, you can have a model where you try to handle all the
requests that can be handled out of cache first (using RWF_NOWAIT) and
then when you've run out of cached cases you clear the RWF_NOWAIT
flag, but now the IO has been started early (and could overlap with
the cached request handling), so then when you actually do a blocking
version, you get much better performance.

So there is an argument that removing that one RWF_NOWAIT case might
actually be a good thing in general, outside of  the "don't allow
probing the cache without changing the state of it" issue.

But that's handwavy and optimistic. Reality is often not as accomodating ;)

                   Linus