From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752290AbXBDK4Q (ORCPT ); Sun, 4 Feb 2007 05:56:16 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752288AbXBDK4Q (ORCPT ); Sun, 4 Feb 2007 05:56:16 -0500 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.24]:36592 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752283AbXBDK4O (ORCPT ); Sun, 4 Feb 2007 05:56:14 -0500 Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2007 02:56:02 -0800 From: Andrew Morton To: Nick Piggin Cc: Linux Kernel , Linux Filesystems , Linux Memory Management Subject: Re: [patch 9/9] mm: fix pagecache write deadlocks Message-Id: <20070204025602.a5f8c53a.akpm@linux-foundation.org> In-Reply-To: <20070204104609.GA29943@wotan.suse.de> References: <20070204063707.23659.20741.sendpatchset@linux.site> <20070204063833.23659.55105.sendpatchset@linux.site> <20070204014445.88e6c8c7.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <20070204101529.GA22004@wotan.suse.de> <20070204023055.2583fd65.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <20070204104609.GA29943@wotan.suse.de> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 2.2.7 (GTK+ 2.8.17; x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sun, 4 Feb 2007 11:46:09 +0100 Nick Piggin wrote: > On Sun, Feb 04, 2007 at 02:30:55AM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote: > > On Sun, 4 Feb 2007 11:15:29 +0100 Nick Piggin wrote: > > > > > The write path is broken. I prefer my kernels slow, than buggy. > > > > That won't fly. > > What won't fly? I suspect the performance cost of this approach would force us to redo it all. > > > > What happened to the idea of doing an atomic copy into the non-uptodate > > > > page and handling it somehow? > > > > > > That was my second idea. > > > > Coulda sworn it was mine ;) I thought you ended up deciding it wasn't > > practical because of the games we needed to play with ->commit_write. > > Maybe I misunderstood what you meant, above. The original set of half-written patches I sent you. Do an atomic copy_from_user() inside the page lock and if that fails, zero out the remainder of the page, run commit_write() and then redo the whole thing. > I have an alterative fix > where a temporary page is allocated if the write enncounters a non > uptodate page. The usercopy then goes into that page, and from there > into the target page after we have opened the prepare_write(). Remember that a non-uptodate page is the common case. > My *first* idea to fix this was to do the atomic copy into a non-uptodate > page and then calling a zero-length commit_write if it failed. I pretty > carefully constructed all these good arguments as to why each case works > properly, but in the end it just didn't fly because it broke lots of > filesystems. I forget the details now. I think we did have a workable-looking solution based on the atomic copy_from_user() but it would have re-exposed the old problem wherein a page would fleetingly have a bunch of zeroes in the middle of it, if someone looked at it during the write. If that recollection is right, I think we could afford to reintroduce that problem, frankly. Especially as it only happens in the incredibly rare case of that get_user()ed page getting unmapped under our feet. > > > but you introduce the theoretical memory deadlock > > > where a task cannot reclaim its own memory. > > > > Nah, that'll never happen - both pages are already allocated. > > Both pages? I don't get it. > > You set the don't-reclaim vma flag, then run get_user, which takes a > page fault and potentially has to allocate N pages for pagetables, > pagecache readahead, buffers and fs private data and pagecache radix > tree nodes for all of the pages read in. Oh, OK. Need to do the get_user() twice then. Once before taking that new rwsem.