Re: [PATCH] block: Make __bio_clone_fast() copy bi_vcnt

Bart Van Assche
2018-06-28T23:54:46Z

On 06/28/18 16:16, Kent Overstreet wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 29, 2018 at 07:10:47AM +0800, Ming Lei wrote:
>> On Thu, Jun 28, 2018 at 11:21 PM, Bart Van Assche
>> <bart.vanassche@wdc.com> wrote:
>>> On 06/27/18 17:30, Ming Lei wrote:
>>>>
>>>> One core idea of immutable bvec is to use bio->bi_iter and the original
>>>> bvec table to iterate over anywhere in the bio. That is why .bi_io_vec
>>>> needs to copy, but not see any reason why .bi_vcnt needs to do.
>>>>
>>>> Do you have use cases on .bi_vcnt for cloned bio?
>>>
>>> So far this is only a theoretical concern. There are many functions in the
>>> block layer that use .bi_vcnt, and it is a lot of work to figure out all the
>>> callers of all these functions.
>
> Back when I implemented immutable biovecs I thoroughly audited all the bi_vcnt
> uses and removed all of them that weren't by the code that owns/submits the bio.
>
> Grepping around I see one or two suspicious uses.. blk-merge.c in particular
>
>> No, any functions using .bi_vcnt on a cloned-bio may be a bug, and we should
>> take a close look.
>
> not just cloned bios, any code using bi_vcnt on a bio it didn't create is wrong.
>
> so big nack to this patch (I wasn't ccd on it though and it doesn't seem to have
> hit lkml, so I can't find the original patch...)

Hello Kent,

Thanks for chiming in. The linux-block mailing list is archived by
multiple websites. The entire e-mail thread is available on e.g.
https://www.mail-archive.com/linux-block@vger.kernel.org/msg23006.html.

I have a question for you: at least in kernel v4.17 bio_clone_bioset()
copies bi_vcnt from the source to the destination bio. However,
__bio_clone_fast() doesn't copy bi_vcnt. Isn't that an inconsistency?

Thanks,

Bart.