Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751564AbWL2KuA (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Dec 2006 05:50:00 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751732AbWL2KuA (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Dec 2006 05:50:00 -0500 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.25]:47411 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751561AbWL2Kto (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Dec 2006 05:49:44 -0500 Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2006 02:48:35 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds To: Segher Boessenkool cc: David Miller , nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au, kenneth.w.chen@intel.com, guichaz@yahoo.fr, hugh@veritas.com, Linux Kernel Mailing List , ranma@tdiedrich.de, gordonfarquharson@gmail.com, Andrew Morton , a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl, tbm@cyrius.com, arjan@infradead.org, andrei.popa@i-neo.ro Subject: Re: Ok, explained.. (was Re: [PATCH] mm: fix page_mkclean_one) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <20061228114517.3315aee7.akpm@osdl.org> <20061228.143815.41633302.davem@davemloft.net> <3d6d8711f7b892a11801d43c5996ebdf@kernel.crashing.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2880 Lines: 88 On Fri, 29 Dec 2006, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > Hmm? I'd love it if somebody else wrote the patch and tested it, because > I'm getting sick and tired of this bug ;) Who the hell am I kidding? I haven't been able to sleep right for the last few days over this bug. It was really getting to me. And putting on the thinking cap, there's actually a fairly simple an nonintrusive patch. It still has a tiny tiny race (see the comment), but I bet nobody can really hit it in real life anyway, and I know several ways to fix it, so I'm not really _that_ worried about it. The patch is mostly a comment. The "real" meat of it is actually just a few lines. Can anybody get corruption with this thing applied? It goes on top of plain v2.6.20-rc2. Linus ---- diff --git a/mm/page-writeback.c b/mm/page-writeback.c index b3a198c..ec01da1 100644 --- a/mm/page-writeback.c +++ b/mm/page-writeback.c @@ -862,17 +862,46 @@ int clear_page_dirty_for_io(struct page *page) { struct address_space *mapping = page_mapping(page); - if (!mapping) - return TestClearPageDirty(page); - - if (TestClearPageDirty(page)) { - if (mapping_cap_account_dirty(mapping)) { - page_mkclean(page); + if (mapping && mapping_cap_account_dirty(mapping)) { + /* + * Yes, Virginia, this is indeed insane. + * + * We use this sequence to make sure that + * (a) we account for dirty stats properly + * (b) we tell the low-level filesystem to + * mark the whole page dirty if it was + * dirty in a pagetable. Only to then + * (c) clean the page again and return 1 to + * cause the writeback. + * + * This way we avoid all nasty races with the + * dirty bit in multiple places and clearing + * them concurrently from different threads. + * + * Note! Normally the "set_page_dirty(page)" + * has no effect on the actual dirty bit - since + * that will already usually be set. But we + * need the side effects, and it can help us + * avoid races. + * + * We basically use the page "master dirty bit" + * as a serialization point for all the different + * threds doing their things. + * + * FIXME! We still have a race here: if somebody + * adds the page back to the page tables in + * between the "page_mkclean()" and the "TestClearPageDirty()", + * we might have it mapped without the dirty bit set. + */ + if (page_mkclean(page)) + set_page_dirty(page); + if (TestClearPageDirty(page)) { dec_zone_page_state(page, NR_FILE_DIRTY); + return 1; } - return 1; + return 0; } - return 0; + return TestClearPageDirty(page); } EXPORT_SYMBOL(clear_page_dirty_for_io); - 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/