[PATCH] ext4: Flush any pending end_io requests before O_direct read on dioread_nolock

Jiaying Zhang
2011-08-19T01:28:48Z

There is a race between ext4 buffer write and direct_IO read with
dioread_nolock mount option enabled. The problem is that we clear
PageWriteback flag during end_io time but will do
uninitialized-to-initialized extent conversion later with dioread_nolock.
If an O_direct read request comes in during this period, ext4 will return
zero instead of the recently written data.

This patch checks whether there are any pending uninitialized-to-initialized
extent conversion requests before doing O_direct read to close the race.
Note that this is just a bandaid fix. The fundamental issue is that we
clear PageWriteback flag before we really complete an IO, which is
problem-prone. To fix the fundamental issue, we may need to implement an
extent tree cache that we can use to look up pending to-be-converted extents.

Signed-off-by: Jiaying Zhang <jiayingz@google.com>
---
fs/ext4/indirect.c | 9 +++++++--
1 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/fs/ext4/indirect.c b/fs/ext4/indirect.c
index 6c27111..ca90d73 100644
--- a/fs/ext4/indirect.c
+++ b/fs/ext4/indirect.c
@@ -800,12 +800,17 @@ ssize_t ext4_ind_direct_IO(int rw, struct kiocb *iocb,
}

retry:
- if (rw == READ && ext4_should_dioread_nolock(inode))
+ if (rw == READ && ext4_should_dioread_nolock(inode)) {
+ if (unlikely(!list_empty(&ei->i_completed_io_list))) {
+ mutex_lock(&inode->i_mutex);
+ ext4_flush_completed_IO(inode);
+ mutex_unlock(&inode->i_mutex);
+ }
ret = __blockdev_direct_IO(rw, iocb, inode,
inode->i_sb->s_bdev, iov,
offset, nr_segs,
ext4_get_block, NULL, NULL, 0);
- else {
+ } else {
ret = blockdev_direct_IO(rw, iocb, inode,
inode->i_sb->s_bdev, iov,
offset, nr_segs,
--
1.7.3.1