Re: [patch 4/4] Btrfs: pass __GFP_WRITE for buffered write page allocations

Johannes Weiner
2011-09-20T14:14:16Z

On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 10:09:38AM -0400, Josef Bacik wrote:
> On 09/20/2011 09:56 AM, Johannes Weiner wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 03:45:15PM +0200, Johannes Weiner wrote:
> >> Tell the page allocator that pages allocated for a buffered write are
> >> expected to become dirty soon.
> >>
> >> Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <jweiner@redhat.com>
> >> ---
> >> fs/btrfs/file.c | 2 +-
> >> 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
> >>
> >> diff --git a/fs/btrfs/file.c b/fs/btrfs/file.c
> >> index e7872e4..ea1b892 100644
> >> --- a/fs/btrfs/file.c
> >> +++ b/fs/btrfs/file.c
> >> @@ -1084,7 +1084,7 @@ static noinline int prepare_pages(struct btrfs_root *root, struct file *file,
> >> again:
> >> for (i = 0; i < num_pages; i++) {
> >> pages[i] = find_or_create_page(inode->i_mapping, index + i,
> >> - GFP_NOFS);
> >> + GFP_NOFS | __GFP_WRITE);
> >
> > Btw and unrelated to this particular series, I think this should use
> > grab_cache_page_write_begin() in the first place.
> >
> > Most grab_cache_page calls were replaced recently (a94733d "Btrfs: use
> > find_or_create_page instead of grab_cache_page") to be able to pass
> > GFP_NOFS, but the pages are now also no longer __GFP_HIGHMEM and
> > __GFP_MOVABLE, which irks both x86_32 and memory hotplug.
> >
> > It might be better to change grab_cache_page instead to take a flags
> > argument that allows passing AOP_FLAG_NOFS and revert the sites back
> > to this helper?
>
> So I can do
>
> pages[i] = grab_cache_page_write_begin(inode->i_mapping, index + i,
> AOP_FLAG_NOFS);
>
> right? All we need is nofs, so I can just go through and change
> everybody to that.

It does wait_on_page_writeback() in addition, so it may not be
appropriate for every callsite, I haven't checked. But everything
that grabs a page for writing should be fine if you do it like this.

> I'd rather not have to go through and change grab_cache_page() to
> take a flags argument and change all the callers, I have a bad habit
> of screwing stuff like that up :).

Yeah, there are quite a few. If we can get around it, all the better.

Hannes