linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v3] fs/buffer.c: update per-CPU bh

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Date:   Thu, 2 Feb 2023 22:51:27 +0000
From:   Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>
To:     Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com>
Cc:     Marcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@...hat.com>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
        Alexander Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>,
        Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>, Jens Axboe <axboe@...nel.dk>,
        Frederic Weisbecker <frederic@...nel.org>,
        Leonardo Bras <leobras@...hat.com>,
        Yair Podemsky <ypodemsk@...hat.com>, P J P <ppandit@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3] fs/buffer.c: update per-CPU bh_lru cache via RCU

On Fri, Feb 03, 2023 at 09:36:53AM +1100, Dave Chinner wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 01, 2023 at 01:01:47PM -0300, Marcelo Tosatti wrote:
> > 
> > umount calls invalidate_bh_lrus which IPIs each
> 
> via invalidate_bdev(). So this is only triggered on unmount of
> filesystems that use the block device mapping directly, right?
> 
> Or is the problem that userspace is polling the block device (e.g.
> udisks, blkid, etc) whilst the filesystem is mounted and populating
> the block device mapping with cached pages so invalidate_bdev()
> always does work even when the filesystem doesn't actually use the
> bdev mapping?
> 
> > CPU that has non empty per-CPU buffer_head cache:
> > 
> >        	on_each_cpu_cond(has_bh_in_lru, invalidate_bh_lru, NULL, 1);
> > 
> > This interrupts CPUs which might be executing code sensitive
> > to interferences.
> > 
> > To avoid the IPI, free the per-CPU caches remotely via RCU.
> > Two bh_lrus structures for each CPU are allocated: one is being
> > used (assigned to per-CPU bh_lru pointer), and the other is
> > being freed (or idle).
> 
> Rather than adding more complexity to the legacy bufferhead code,
> wouldn't it be better to switch the block device mapping to use
> iomap+folios and get rid of the use of bufferheads altogether?

Pretty sure ext4's journalling relies on the blockdev using
buffer_heads.  At least, I did a conversion of blockdev to use
mpage_readahead() and ext4 stopped working.