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Date: Mon, 6 May 2024 14:47:23 +0200
From: Daniel Vetter <daniel@ffwll.ch>
To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
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Subject: Re: [PATCH] epoll: try to be a _bit_ better about file lifetimes
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On Sun, May 05, 2024 at 01:53:48PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Sun, 5 May 2024 at 13:30, Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> >
> > 0.      special-cased ->f_count rule for ->poll() is a wart and it's
> > better to get rid of it.
> >
> > 1.      fs/eventpoll.c is a steaming pile of shit and I'd be glad to see
> > git rm taken to it.  Short of that, by all means, let's grab reference
> > in there around the call of vfs_poll() (see (0)).
> 
> Agreed on 0/1.
> 
> > 2.      having ->poll() instances grab extra references to file passed
> > to them is not something that should be encouraged; there's a plenty
> > of potential problems, and "caller has it pinned, so we are fine with
> > grabbing extra refs" is nowhere near enough to eliminate those.
> 
> So it's not clear why you hate it so much, since those extra
> references are totally normal in all the other VFS paths.
> 
> I mean, they are perhaps not the *common* case, but we have a lot of
> random get_file() calls sprinkled around in various places when you
> end up passing a file descriptor off to some asynchronous operation
> thing.
> 
> Yeah, I think most of them tend to be special operations (eg the tty
> TIOCCONS ioctl to redirect the console), but it's not like vfs_ioctl()
> is *that* different from vfs_poll. Different operation, not somehow
> "one is more special than the other".
> 
> cachefiles and backing-file does it for regular IO, and drop it at IO
> completion - not that different from what dma-buf does. It's in
> ->read_iter() rather than ->poll(), but again: different operations,
> but not "one of them is somehow fundamentally different".
> 
> > 3.      dma-buf uses of get_file() are probably safe (epoll shite aside),
> > but they do look fishy.  That has nothing to do with epoll.
> 
> Now, what dma-buf basically seems to do is to avoid ref-counting its
> own fundamental data structure, and replaces that by refcounting the
> 'struct file' that *points* to it instead.
> 
> And it is a bit odd, but it actually makes some amount of sense,
> because then what it passes around is that file pointer (and it allows
> passing it around from user space *as* that file).
> 
> And honestly, if you look at why it then needs to add its refcount to
> it all, it actually makes sense.  dma-bufs have this notion of
> "fences" that are basically completion points for the asynchronous
> DMA. Doing a "poll()" operation will add a note to the fence to get
> that wakeup when it's done.
> 
> And yes, logically it takes a ref to the "struct dma_buf", but because
> of how the lifetime of the dma_buf is associated with the lifetime of
> the 'struct file', that then turns into taking a ref on the file.
> 
> Unusual? Yes. But not illogical. Not obviously broken. Tying the
> lifetime of the dma_buf to the lifetime of a file that is passed along
> makes _sense_ for that use.
> 
> I'm sure dma-bufs could add another level of refcounting on the
> 'struct dma_buf' itself, and not make it be 1:1 with the file, but
> it's not clear to me what the advantage would really be, or why it
> would be wrong to re-use a refcount that is already there.

So there is generally another refcount, because dma_buf is just the
cross-driver interface to some kind of real underlying buffer object from
the various graphics related subsystems we have.

And since it's a pure file based api thing that ceases to serve any
function once the fd/file is gone we tied all the dma_buf refcounting to
the refcount struct file already maintains. But the underlying buffer
object can easily outlive the dma_buf, and over the lifetime of an
underlying buffer object you might actually end up creating different
dma_buf api wrappers for it (but at least in drm we guarantee there's at
most one, hence why vmwgfx does the atomic_inc_unless_zero trick, which I
don't particularly like and isn't really needed).

But we could add another refcount, it just means we have 3 of those then
when only really 2 are needed.

Also maybe here two: dma_fence are bounded like other disk i/o (including
the option of timeouts if things go very wrong), so it's very much not
forever but at most a few seconds worst case (shit hw/driver excluded, as
usual).
-Sima
-- 
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
http://blog.ffwll.ch