Re: [PATCH] jbd_commit_transaction() races with journal_try_to_drop_buffers() causing DIO failures

[Mingming Cao <cmm@us.ibm.com>]

On Wed, 2008-05-14 at 20:14 +0200, Jan Kara wrote:
> On Wed 14-05-08 10:41:12, Mingming Cao wrote:
> > > > Bummer, we can't free buffers in ext3_launder_page() before calling
> > > > try_to_free_page, as later
> > > > invalidate_complete_page2()->try_to_free_page() expecting the page
> > > > buffers are still here, and will return EIO if it launder_page() has
> > > > already freed those buffers.:(
> > >   Are you sure? Because if bufferes are released in ext3_launder_page(),
> > > PagePrivate() has been set to 0 and we should directly fall through to
> > > releasing the page without ever calling try_to_release_page()... So I'd
> > > want to find out why PagePrivate is still set in
> > > invalidate_complete_page2().
> > > 
> > 
> > You are right. PagePrivate() is being set to 0 in drop_buffers(). 
> > 
> > The problem is do_launder_page() returns successfully if the page is not
> > dirty (our case), so ext3_launder_page() is not even get called. This
> > also explains why the log_wait_commit() approach doesn't work for me:(
>   I didn't realize PageDirty() is going to be already cleared by previous
> writes... :(
> 
> > Have to think other ways...could we pass some flag to
> > journal_try_to_free_buffers(), and ask journal_try_to_free_buffers()
> > wait for jbd commit to finish flushing the data, if the request is from
> > directo IO?
>   Well, we could do that but we'd have to change try_to_release_page() call
> to accept an extra argument which would consequently mean changing all the
> filesystems... 

Actually there is an argument gfp_mask passed to try_to_release_page()
which we could pass a special flag from direct IO that could be parsed
as direct IO request.  This would avoid changing all the filesystems and
the address space operation interface.  In fact, I don't see in-kernel
tree fs releasepage() cal back functions is using this gfp_mask, but
btrfs is using it.

> But yes, it probably makes sence because it is really
> different whether we should just release the page because of memory
> pressure or because direct IO needs to write to that area of the file.
> So adding the parameter to releasepage() callback is probably a reasonable
> thing to do.
> 
Will send a patch shortly, with that patch the test fine for about 18
hours.