Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932107AbbEHO3y (ORCPT ); Fri, 8 May 2015 10:29:54 -0400 Received: from mailrelay.lanline.com ([216.187.10.16]:28440 "EHLO mailrelay.lanline.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753224AbbEHO3e (ORCPT ); Fri, 8 May 2015 10:29:34 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <21836.51274.843585.839614@quad.stoffel.home> Date: Fri, 8 May 2015 10:29:30 -0400 From: "John Stoffel" To: Sage Weil Cc: Zach Brown , Dave Chinner , Alexander Viro , linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-api@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC] vfs: add a O_NOMTIME flag In-Reply-To: References: <1430949612-21356-1-git-send-email-zab@redhat.com> <20150507002617.GJ4327@dastard> <20150507172053.GA659@lenny.home.zabbo.net> X-Mailer: VM 8.2.0b under 23.4.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3149 Lines: 65 >>>>> "Sage" == Sage Weil writes: Sage> On Thu, 7 May 2015, Zach Brown wrote: >> On Thu, May 07, 2015 at 10:26:17AM +1000, Dave Chinner wrote: >> > On Wed, May 06, 2015 at 03:00:12PM -0700, Zach Brown wrote: >> > > The criteria for using O_NOMTIME is the same as for using O_NOATIME: >> > > owning the file or having the CAP_FOWNER capability. If we're not >> > > comfortable allowing owners to prevent mtime/ctime updates then we >> > > should add a tunable to allow O_NOMTIME. Maybe a mount option? >> > >> > I dislike "turn off safety for performance" options because Joe >> > SpeedRacer will always select performance over safety. >> >> Well, for ceph there's no safety concern. They never use cmtime in >> these files. >> >> So are you suggesting not implementing this and making them rework their >> IO paths to avoid the fs maintaining mtime so that we don't give Joe >> Speedracer more rope? Or are we talking about adding some speed bumps >> that ceph can flip on that might give Joe Speedracer pause? Sage> I think this is the fundamental question: who do we give the Sage> ammunition to, the user or app writer, or the sysadmin? Sage> One might argue that we gave the user a similar power with Sage> O_NOATIME (the power to break applications that assume atime is Sage> accurate). Here we give developers/users the power to not Sage> update mtime and suffer the consequences (like, obviously, Sage> breaking mtime-based backups). It should be pretty obvious to Sage> anyone using the flag what the consequences are. Not modifying atime doesn't really break anything except people who think they can tell when a file was last accessed. Which isn't critical (unless your in a paranoid security conscious place...) but MTIME is another beast entirely. Turning that off is going to break lots of hidden assumptions. Sage> Note that we can suffer similar lapses in mtime with fdatasync Sage> followed by a system crash. And as Andy points out it's Sage> semi-broken for writable mmap. The crash case is obviously a Sage> slightly different thing, but the idea that mtime can't always Sage> be trusted certainly isn't crazy talk. True, but after a crash... people expect and understand there might be corruption in a filesystem. Sage> Or, we can be conservative and require a mount option so that Sage> the admin has to explicitly allow behavior that might break some Sage> existing assumptions about mtime/ctime ('-o user_noatime' I Sage> guess?). Sage> I'm happy either way, so long as in the end an unprivileged ceph Sage> daemon avoids the useless work. In our case we always own the Sage> entire mount/disk, so a mount option is just fine. I agree with the mount option, makes it crystal clear. And then it's on the sysadmin/owner of the system to understand (ha!) the problems. This is all me speaking with my Sysadmin hat firmly on my head. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/