Re: [PATCH 12/12] dax: New fault locking

[NeilBrown <neilb@suse.com>]

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On Fri, Mar 11 2016, Jan Kara wrote:

> Currently DAX page fault locking is racy.
>
> CPU0 (write fault)		CPU1 (read fault)
>
> __dax_fault()			__dax_fault()
>   get_block(inode, block, &bh, 0) -> not mapped
> 				  get_block(inode, block, &bh, 0)
> 				    -> not mapped
>   if (!buffer_mapped(&bh))
>     if (vmf->flags & FAULT_FLAG_WRITE)
>       get_block(inode, block, &bh, 1) -> allocates blocks
>   if (page) -> no
> 				  if (!buffer_mapped(&bh))
> 				    if (vmf->flags & FAULT_FLAG_WRITE) {
> 				    } else {
> 				      dax_load_hole();
> 				    }
>   dax_insert_mapping()
>
> And we are in a situation where we fail in dax_radix_entry() with -EIO.
>
> Another problem with the current DAX page fault locking is that there is
> no race-free way to clear dirty tag in the radix tree. We can always
> end up with clean radix tree and dirty data in CPU cache.
>
> We fix the first problem by introducing locking of exceptional radix
> tree entries in DAX mappings acting very similarly to page lock and thus
> synchronizing properly faults against the same mapping index. The same
> lock can later be used to avoid races when clearing radix tree dirty
> tag.

Hi,
 I think the exception locking bits look good - I cannot comment on the
 rest.
 I looks like it was a good idea to bring the locking into dax.c instead
 of trying to make it generic.

Thanks,
NeilBrown

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