Re: [PATCH 1/2] mm: Add readahead file operation

Amir Goldstein
2019-06-03T16:17:12Z

On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 4:22 PM Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> wrote:
>
> Some filesystems need to acquire locks before pages are read into page
> cache to protect from races with hole punching. The lock generally
> cannot be acquired within readpage as it ranks above page lock so we are
> left with acquiring the lock within filesystem's ->read_iter
> implementation for normal reads and ->fault implementation during page
> faults. That however does not cover all paths how pages can be
> instantiated within page cache - namely explicitely requested readahead.
> Add new ->readahead file operation which filesystem can use for this.
>
> CC: stable@vger.kernel.org # Needed by following ext4 fix
> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
> ---
> include/linux/fs.h | 5 +++++
> include/linux/mm.h | 3 ---
> mm/fadvise.c | 12 +-----------
> mm/madvise.c | 3 ++-
> mm/readahead.c | 26 ++++++++++++++++++++++++--
> 5 files changed, 32 insertions(+), 17 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/include/linux/fs.h b/include/linux/fs.h
> index f7fdfe93e25d..9968abcd06ea 100644
> --- a/include/linux/fs.h
> +++ b/include/linux/fs.h
> @@ -1828,6 +1828,7 @@ struct file_operations {
> struct file *file_out, loff_t pos_out,
> loff_t len, unsigned int remap_flags);
> int (*fadvise)(struct file *, loff_t, loff_t, int);
> + int (*readahead)(struct file *, loff_t, loff_t);

The new method is redundant, because it is a subset of fadvise.
When overlayfs needed to implement both methods, Miklos
suggested that we unite them into one, hence:
3d8f7615319b vfs: implement readahead(2) using POSIX_FADV_WILLNEED

So you can accomplish the ext4 fix without the new method.
All you need extra is implementing madvise_willneed() with vfs_fadvise().

Thanks,
Amir.