Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S271144AbUJVAtq (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 Oct 2004 20:49:46 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S271137AbUJVArN (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 Oct 2004 20:47:13 -0400 Received: from mail-relay-3.tiscali.it ([213.205.33.43]:26521 "EHLO mail-relay-3.tiscali.it") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S271160AbUJVAlO (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 Oct 2004 20:41:14 -0400 Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 02:41:59 +0200 From: Andrea Arcangeli To: Andrew Morton Cc: shaggy@austin.ibm.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] zap_pte_range should not mark non-uptodate pages dirty Message-ID: <20041022004159.GB14325@dualathlon.random> References: <1098393346.7157.112.camel@localhost> <20041021144531.22dd0d54.akpm@osdl.org> <20041021223613.GA8756@dualathlon.random> <20041021160233.68a84971.akpm@osdl.org> <20041021232059.GE8756@dualathlon.random> <20041021164245.4abec5d2.akpm@osdl.org> <20041021171558.3214cea4.akpm@osdl.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20041021171558.3214cea4.akpm@osdl.org> X-GPG-Key: 1024D/68B9CB43 13D9 8355 295F 4823 7C49 C012 DFA1 686E 68B9 CB43 X-PGP-Key: 1024R/CB4660B9 CC A0 71 81 F4 A0 63 AC C0 4B 81 1D 8C 15 C8 E5 User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3234 Lines: 59 On Thu, Oct 21, 2004 at 05:15:58PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote: > Andrew Morton wrote: > > > > I don't get it. invalidate has the pageframe. All it need to do is to > > lock the page, examine mapcount and if it's non-zero, do the shootdown. > > unmap_mapping_range() will do that - can call it one page at a time, or > batch up runs of pages. It's not fast, but presumably not frequent either. That would shootdown the ptes to add completely coherency to the mmaps, right. Still we could shootdown the ptes after clearing the uptodate bitflag, allowing the mapped page to be not uptodate for a short while, since it makes sense and it's harmless. The pte shootdown from my point of view is just an additional coherency feature, but it cannot provide full coherency anyways, since the invalidate arrives after the I/O hit the disk, so the page will be out of sync with the disk if it's dirty, and no coherency can be provided anyways, because no locking happens to get max scalability. > The bigger problem is shooting down the buffer_heads. It's certainly the > case that mpage_readpage() will call block_read_full_page() which will then > bring the page uptodate without performing any I/O. yes, this is actually the only bug I can see in this whole affair (besdies the BUG that goes away with the patch already posted, and that patch still makes perfect sense to me since we could use it even for a more relaxed pte shootdown as described above, plus it doesn't worth to mark not-uptodate pages as dirty, that is really what makes no sense and needs fixing). > And invalidating the buffer_heads in invalidate_inode_pages2() is tricky - > we need to enter the filesystem and I'm not sure that either > ->invalidatepage() or ->releasepage() are quite suitable. For a start, > they're best-effort and may fail. If we just go and mark the buffers not > uptodate we'll probably give ext3 a heart attack, so careful work would be > needed there. > > Let's go back to why we needed all of this. Was it just for the NFS > something-changed-on-the-server code? If so, would it be sufficient to add > a new invalidate_inode_pages3() just for NFS, which clears the uptodate > bit? Or something along those lines? nfs is a case here too. But this is mostly needed for O_DIRECT write happening on a file that is mmapped and read in buffered mode at the same time. The API totally ignores the mapping, but we must guarantee buffered read to see the written data on disk, and in turn the uptodate bitflag must be clared because the page is not uptodate anymore. This just describes what has happened on disk and it tells to _future_ page faults (or buffered read syscalls) they've to re-read from disk. The only issue seems to be the bhs. Peraphs te bhs requires a new bitflag if the fs risks an hearth attack, but the VM can do the natural thing of clearing the uptodate bitflag reflecting the fact the cache is out-of-date, since the VM can deal with that just fine. - 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/