From: Jeff Layton Subject: [PATCH v7 14/22] Documentation: flesh out the section in vfs.txt on storing and reporting writeback errors Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2017 15:34:19 -0400 Message-ID: <20170616193427.13955-15-jlayton@redhat.com> References: <20170616193427.13955-1-jlayton@redhat.com> Cc: Carlos Maiolino , Eryu Guan , David Howells , Christoph Hellwig , linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org, linux-xfs@vger.kernel.org, linux-btrfs@vger.kernel.org, linux-block@vger.kernel.org To: Andrew Morton , Al Viro , Jan Kara , tytso@mit.edu, axboe@kernel.dk, mawilcox@microsoft.com, ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com, corbet@lwn.net, Chris Mason , Josef Bacik , David Sterba , "Darrick J . Wong" Return-path: In-Reply-To: <20170616193427.13955-1-jlayton@redhat.com> Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org List-Id: linux-ext4.vger.kernel.org Let's try to make this extra clear for fs authors. Cc: Jan Kara Signed-off-by: Jeff Layton --- Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt | 43 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--- 1 file changed, 40 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt index f42b90687d40..f3702d5c6f2f 100644 --- a/Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt @@ -576,7 +576,42 @@ should clear PG_Dirty and set PG_Writeback. It can be actually written at any point after PG_Dirty is clear. Once it is known to be safe, PG_Writeback is cleared. -Writeback makes use of a writeback_control structure... +Writeback makes use of a writeback_control structure to direct the +operations. This gives the the writepage and writepages operations some +information about the nature of and reason for the writeback request, +and the constraints under which it is being done. It is also used to +return information back to the caller about the result of a writepage or +writepages request. + +Handling errors during writeback +-------------------------------- +Most applications that utilize the pagecache will periodically call +fsync to ensure that data written has made it to the backing store. +When there is an error during writeback, they expect that error to be +reported when fsync is called. After an error has been reported on one +fsync, subsequent fsync calls on the same file descriptor should return +0, unless further writeback errors have occurred since the previous +fsync. + +Ideally, the kernel would report an error only on file descriptions on +which writes were done that subsequently failed to be written back. The +generic pagecache infrastructure does not track the file descriptions +that have dirtied each individual page however, so determining which +file descriptors should get back an error is not possible. + +Instead, the generic writeback error tracking infrastructure in the +kernel settles for reporting errors to fsync on all file descriptions +that were open at the time that the error occurred. In a situation with +multiple writers, all of them will get back an error on a subsequent fsync, +even if all of the writes done through that particular file descriptor +succeeded (or even if there were no writes on that file descriptor at all). + +Filesystems that wish to use this infrastructure should call +mapping_set_error to record the error in the address_space when it +occurs. Then, at the end of their fsync operation, they should call +filemap_report_wb_err to ensure that the struct file's error cursor +has advanced to the correct point in the stream of errors emitted by +the backing device(s). struct address_space_operations ------------------------------- @@ -804,7 +839,8 @@ struct address_space_operations { The File Object =============== -A file object represents a file opened by a process. +A file object represents a file opened by a process. This is also known +as an "open file description" in POSIX parlance. struct file_operations @@ -887,7 +923,8 @@ otherwise noted. release: called when the last reference to an open file is closed - fsync: called by the fsync(2) system call + fsync: called by the fsync(2) system call. Also see the section above + entitled "Handling errors during writeback". fasync: called by the fcntl(2) system call when asynchronous (non-blocking) mode is enabled for a file -- 2.13.0 -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: email@kvack.org