Re: [PATCHv3 17/41] filemap: handle huge pages in filemap_fdatawait_range()

Jan Kara
2016-10-13T13:18:02Z

On Thu 13-10-16 15:08:44, Kirill A. Shutemov wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 13, 2016 at 11:44:41AM +0200, Jan Kara wrote:
> > On Thu 15-09-16 14:54:59, Kirill A. Shutemov wrote:
> > > We writeback whole huge page a time.
> >
> > This is one of the things I don't understand. Firstly I didn't see where
> > changes of writeback like this would happen (maybe they come later).
> > Secondly I'm not sure why e.g. writeback should behave atomically wrt huge
> > pages. Is this because radix-tree multiorder entry tracks dirtiness for us
> > at that granularity?
>
> We track dirty/writeback on per-compound pages: meaning we have one
> dirty/writeback flag for whole compound page, not on every individual
> 4k subpage. The same story for radix-tree tags.
>
> > BTW, can you also explain why do we need multiorder entries? What do
> > they solve for us?
>
> It helps us having coherent view on tags in radix-tree: no matter which
> index we refer from the range huge page covers we will get the same
> answer on which tags set.

OK, understand that. But why do we need a coherent view? For which purposes
exactly do we care that it is not just a bunch of 4k pages that happen to
be physically contiguous and thus can be mapped in one PMD?

Honza
--
Jan Kara <jack@suse.com>
SUSE Labs, CR