Re: DAX mapping detection (was: Re: [PATCH] Fix region lost in /proc/self/smaps)

[Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>]

On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 08:53:46AM -0800, Dan Williams wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 4:40 PM, Darrick J. Wong
> <darrick.wong@oracle.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Dec 19, 2016 at 05:18:40PM -0800, Dan Williams wrote:
> >> On Mon, Dec 19, 2016 at 5:09 PM, Darrick J. Wong
> >> <darrick.wong@oracle.com> wrote:
> >> > On Mon, Dec 19, 2016 at 02:11:49PM -0700, Ross Zwisler wrote:
> >> >> On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 03:54:05PM +1000, Nicholas Piggin wrote:
> >> >> <>
> >> >> > Definitely the first step would be your simple preallocated per
> >> >> > inode approach until it is shown to be insufficient.
> >> >>
> >> >> Reviving this thread a few months later...
> >> >>
> >> >> Dave, we're interested in taking a serious look at what it would take to get
> >> >> PMEM_IMMUTABLE working.  Do you still hold the opinion that this is (or could
> >> >> become, with some amount of work) a workable solution?
> >> >>
> >> >> We're happy to do the grunt work for this feature, but we will probably need
> >> >> guidance from someone with more XFS experience.  With you out on extended leave
> >> >> the first half of 2017, who would be the best person to ask for this guidance?
> >> >> Darrick?
> >> >
> >> > Yes, probably. :)
> >> >
> >> > I think where we left off with this (on the XFS side) is some sort of
> >> > fallocate mode that would allocate blocks, zero them, and then set the
> >> > DAX and PMEM_IMMUTABLE on-disk inode flags.  After that, you'd mmap the
> >> > file and thereby gain the ability to control write persistents behavior
> >> > without having to worry about fs metadata updates.  As an added plus, I
> >> > think zeroing the pmem also clears media errors, or something like that.
> >> >
> >> > <shrug> Is that a reasonable starting point?  My memory is a little foggy.
> >> >
> >> > Hmm, I see Dan just posted something about blockdev fallocate.  I'll go
> >> > read that.
> >>
> >> That's for device-dax, which is basically a poor man's PMEM_IMMUTABLE
> >> via a character device interface. It's useful for cases where you want
> >> an entire nvdimm namespace/volume in "no fs-metadata to worry about"
> >> mode.  But, for sub-allocations of a namespace and support for
> >> existing tooling, PMEM_IMMUTABLE is much more usable.
> >
> > Well sure... but otoh I was thinking that it'd be pretty neat if we
> > could use the same code regardless of whether the target file was a
> > dax-device or an xfs file:
> >
> > fd = open("<some path>", O_RDWR);
> > fstat(fd, &statbuf):
> > fallocate(fd, FALLOC_FL_PMEM_IMMUTABLE, 0, statbuf.st_size);
> > p = mmap(NULL, statbuf.st_size, PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, fd, 0);
> >
> > *(p + 42) = 0xDEADBEEF;
> > asm { clflush; } /* or whatever */
> >
> > ...so perhaps it would be a good idea to design the fallocate primitive
> > around "prepare this fd for mmap-only pmem semantics" and let it the
> > backend do zeroing and inode flag changes as necessary to make it
> > happen.  We'd need to do some bikeshedding about what the other falloc
> > flags mean when we're dealing with pmem files and devices, but I think
> > we should try to keep the userland presentation the same unless there's
> > a really good reason not to.
> 
> It would be interesting to use fallocate to size device-dax files...

No. device-dax needs to die, not poison a bunch of existing file and
block device APIs and behaviours with special snowflakes.  Get
DAX-enabled filesystems to do what you need, and get rid of this
ugly, nasty hack.

Cheers,

Dave.
-- 
Dave Chinner
david@fromorbit.com
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