Date:   Mon, 15 Jun 2020 19:26:38 +0300
From:   Amir Goldstein <amir73il@...il.com>
To:     Mel Gorman <mgorman@...hsingularity.net>
Cc:     Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>, Alexander Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>,
        linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>,
        linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] fs: Do not check if there is a fsnotify watcher on
 pseudo inodes

On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 3:14 PM Mel Gorman <mgorman@...hsingularity.net> wrote:
>
> Changelog since v1
> o Updated changelog

Slipped to commit message

>
> The kernel uses internal mounts created by kern_mount() and populated
> with files with no lookup path by alloc_file_pseudo for a variety of
> reasons. An example of such a mount is for anonymous pipes. For pipes,
> every vfs_write regardless of filesystem, fsnotify_modify() is called to
> notify of any changes which incurs a small amount of overhead in fsnotify
> even when there are no watchers. It can also trigger for reads and readv
> and writev, it was simply vfs_write() that was noticed first.
>
> A patch is pending that reduces, but does not eliminte, the overhead of

typo: eliminte

> fsnotify but for files that cannot be looked up via a path, even that
> small overhead is unnecessary. The user API for fanotify is based on
> the pathname and a dirfd and proc entries appear to be the only visible
> representation of the files. Proc does not have the same pathname as the
> internal entry and the proc inode is not the same as the internal inode
> so even if fanotify is used on a file under /proc/XX/fd, no useful events
> are notified.
>

Note that fanotify is not the only uapi to add marks, but this is fine by me
I suppose if Jan wants to he can make small corrections on commit.

> This patch changes alloc_file_pseudo() to always opt out of fsnotify by
> setting FMODE_NONOTIFY flag so that no check is made for fsnotify watchers
> on pseudo files. This should be safe as the underlying helper for the
> dentry is d_alloc_pseudo which explicitly states that no lookups are ever
> performed meaning that fanotify should have nothing useful to attach to.
>
> The test motivating this was "perf bench sched messaging --pipe". On
> a single-socket machine using threads the difference of the patch was
> as follows.
>
>                               5.7.0                  5.7.0
>                             vanilla        nofsnotify-v1r1
> Amean     1       1.3837 (   0.00%)      1.3547 (   2.10%)
> Amean     3       3.7360 (   0.00%)      3.6543 (   2.19%)
> Amean     5       5.8130 (   0.00%)      5.7233 *   1.54%*
> Amean     7       8.1490 (   0.00%)      7.9730 *   2.16%*
> Amean     12     14.6843 (   0.00%)     14.1820 (   3.42%)
> Amean     18     21.8840 (   0.00%)     21.7460 (   0.63%)
> Amean     24     28.8697 (   0.00%)     29.1680 (  -1.03%)
> Amean     30     36.0787 (   0.00%)     35.2640 *   2.26%*
> Amean     32     38.0527 (   0.00%)     38.1223 (  -0.18%)
>
> The difference is small but in some cases it's outside the noise so
> while marginal, there is still some small benefit to ignoring fsnotify
> for files allocated via alloc_file_pseudo in some cases.
>
> Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@...hsingularity.net>

Reviewed-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@...il.com>

Thanks,
Amir.

> ---
>  fs/file_table.c | 2 +-
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
>
> diff --git a/fs/file_table.c b/fs/file_table.c
> index 30d55c9a1744..0076ccf67a7d 100644
> --- a/fs/file_table.c
> +++ b/fs/file_table.c
> @@ -229,7 +229,7 @@ struct file *alloc_file_pseudo(struct inode *inode, struct vfsmount *mnt,
>                 d_set_d_op(path.dentry, &anon_ops);
>         path.mnt = mntget(mnt);
>         d_instantiate(path.dentry, inode);
> -       file = alloc_file(&path, flags, fops);
> +       file = alloc_file(&path, flags | FMODE_NONOTIFY, fops);
>         if (IS_ERR(file)) {
>                 ihold(inode);
>                 path_put(&path);

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