Re: invalidate_inode_pages in 2.5.32/3

[Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no>]

>>>>> " " == Andrew Morton <akpm@zip.com.au> writes:

     > Oh.  I thought this was a "purely theoretical" discussion
     > because it only pertains to directory data.  You seem to be
     > saying that NFS is doing this for S_ISREG pagecache also?

Yes. Chuck's particular example pertains to directory data, but if
we're to expand the discussion to what *should* we be doing, then we
need to consider the S_ISREG case too.

     > Again: what do you _want_ to do?  Having potentially incorrect
     > pagecache mapped into process memory space is probably not the
     > answer to that ;)

     > Should we be forcibly unmapping the pages from pagetables?
     > That would result in them being faulted in again, and re-read.

If we could do that for unlocked pages, and at the same time flush out
any pending writes, then that would be ideal. As long as the
page_count() thing is there, we *do* unfortunately have a potential
for cache corruption.
 
    >> (btw: there's currently a bug w.r.t. that'. If I understand you
    >> correctly, the releasepage() thing is unrelated to
    >> page->buffers, but the call in shrink_cache() is masked by an
    >> 'if (page->buffers))

     > That would be in a 2.4 kernel?  In 2.4, page->buffers can only
     > contain buffers.  If it contains anything else the kernel will
     > die.

2.5.33
 
     > If your mapping has old, dirty pages then the VM will call your
    -> vm_writeback to write some of them back.  Or it will repeatedly
     > call ->writepage if you don't define ->vm_writeback.  That's
     > the place to clean the pages.

OK. I'll think about that. I'm off to France on a fortnight's vacation
now. Should leave me with a bit of free time, so once I finish the VFS
credential code, I'll try to find some time to catch up on your recent
changes...

Cheers,
  Trond