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

Al Viro
2021-06-22T15:36:31Z

On Tue, Jun 22, 2021 at 03:27:43PM +0000, Al Viro 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.

Note that the revert you propose is going to do fault-in anyway; we really can't
avoid it. The only thing it does is optimistically trying without that the
first time around, which is going to be an overall loss exactly in "slow
write_begin" case. If source pages are absent, you'll get copyin fail;
iov_iter_copy_from_user_atomic() (or its replacement) is disabling pagefaults
itself.