Re: bcachefs status update (it's done cooking; let's get this sucker merged)

Jan Kara
2019-06-19T08:21:50Z

On Thu 13-06-19 09:02:24, Dave Chinner wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 12:21:44PM -0400, Kent Overstreet wrote:
> > This would simplify things a lot and eliminate a really nasty corner case - page
> > faults trigger readahead. Even if the buffer and the direct IO don't overlap,
> > readahead can pull in pages that do overlap with the dio.
>
> Page cache readahead needs to be moved under the filesystem IO
> locks. There was a recent thread about how readahead can race with
> hole punching and other fallocate() operations because page cache
> readahead bypasses the filesystem IO locks used to serialise page
> cache invalidation.
>
> e.g. Readahead can be directed by userspace via fadvise, so we now
> have file->f_op->fadvise() so that filesystems can lock the inode
> before calling generic_fadvise() such that page cache instantiation
> and readahead dispatch can be serialised against page cache
> invalidation. I have a patch for XFS sitting around somewhere that
> implements the ->fadvise method.
>
> I think there are some other patches floating around to address the
> other readahead mechanisms to only be done under filesytem IO locks,
> but I haven't had time to dig into it any further. Readahead from
> page faults most definitely needs to be under the MMAPLOCK at
> least so it serialises against fallocate()...

Yes, I have patch to make madvise(MADV_WILLNEED) go through ->fadvise() as
well. I'll post it soon since the rest of the series isn't really dependent
on it.

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