Re: Do we need to unrevert "fs: do not prefault sys_write() user buffer pages"?

David Howells
2021-06-22T16:27:10Z

Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 22, 2021 at 04:20:40PM +0100, David Howells wrote:
>
> > and wondering if the iov_iter_fault_in_readable() is actually effective.
> > Yes, it can make sure that the page we're intending to modify is dragged
> > into the pagecache and marked uptodate so that it can be read from, but is
> > it possible for the page to then get reclaimed before we get to
> > iov_iter_copy_from_user_atomic()? a_ops->write_begin() could potentially
> > take a long time, say if it has to go and get a lock/lease from a server.
>
> Yes, it is. So what? We'll just retry. You *can't* take faults while
> holding some pages locked; not without shitloads of deadlocks.

In that case, can we amend the comment immediately above
iov_iter_fault_in_readable()?

/*
* Bring in the user page that we will copy from _first_.
* Otherwise there's a nasty deadlock on copying from the
* same page as we're writing to, without it being marked
* up-to-date.
*
* Not only is this an optimisation, but it is also required
* to check that the address is actually valid, when atomic
* usercopies are used, below.
*/
if (unlikely(iov_iter_fault_in_readable(i, bytes))) {

The first part suggests this is for deadlock avoidance. If that's not true,
then this should perhaps be changed.

David