From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from bombadil.infradead.org ([65.50.211.133]:59857 "EHLO bombadil.infradead.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754953AbdIGLIE (ORCPT ); Thu, 7 Sep 2017 07:08:04 -0400 Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2017 04:08:01 -0700 From: Christoph Hellwig To: Javier =?iso-8859-1?Q?Gonz=E1lez?= Cc: Christoph Hellwig , Matias =?iso-8859-1?Q?Bj=F8rling?= , Jens Axboe , linux-block@vger.kernel.org, Linux Kernel Mailing List , Matias =?iso-8859-1?Q?Bj=F8rling?= Subject: Re: [PATCH 10/18] lightnvm: pblk: use bio_copy_kern when possible Message-ID: <20170907110801.GA17144@infradead.org> References: <1504695071-25928-1-git-send-email-javier@cnexlabs.com> <1504695071-25928-11-git-send-email-javier@cnexlabs.com> <20170906134731.GD3960@infradead.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-block-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-block@vger.kernel.org On Wed, Sep 06, 2017 at 04:00:56PM +0200, Javier Gonz�lez wrote: > > Nope. You want to loop over vmalloc_to_page and call bio_add_page > > for each page, > > Yes. This is basically what I did before. > > > after taking care of virtually tagged caches instead > > of this bounce buffering. > > And thus I considered bio_copy_kern to be a better solution, since it > will through time take care of doing the vmalloc_to_page correctly for > all cases. bio_copy_kern copies all the data, so it is generally not a good idea. The cache flushing isn't too hard - take a look at the XFS buffer cache for an existing version. It would be good to just to do the right thing inside bio_map_kern for that so that callers don't need to care if it is vmalloced or not. > Ok. So this would mean that targets (e.g., pblk) deal with struct > request instead of only dealing with bios and then letting the LightNVM > core transforming bios to requests. This way we can directly map to the > request. Is this what you mean? Yes. > Just out of curiosity, why is forming the bio trough bio_copy_kern (or > manually doing the same) and then transforming to a request incorrect / > worse? Because you expose yourself to the details of mapping a bio to request. We had to export blk_init_request_from_bio just for lightnvm to do this, and it also has to do weird other bits about requests. If you go through blk_rq_map_* the block layer takes care of all that for you.