RE: [PATCH 10/11] nfsd: make deny mode enforcement more efficient and close races in it

["Frank Filz" <ffilzlnx@mindspring.com>]

> On Fri, 11 Jul 2014 10:31:26 -0700
> "Frank Filz" <ffilzlnx@mindspring.com> wrote:
> 
> > > The current enforcement of deny modes is both inefficient and
> > > scattered across several places, which makes it hard to guarantee
> > > atomicity. The inefficiency is a problem now, and the lack of
> > > atomicity will mean races
> > once
> > > the client_mutex is removed.
> > >
> > > First, we address the inefficiency. We have to track deny modes on a
> > > per- stateid basis to ensure that open downgrades are sane, but when
> > > the server goes to enforce them it has to walk the entire list of
> > > stateids and check against each one.
> > >
> > > Instead of doing that, maintain a per-nfs4_file deny mode. When a
> > > file is opened, we simply set any deny bits in that mode that were
> > > specified in
> > the
> > > OPEN call. We can then use that unified deny mode to do a simple
> > > check to see whether there are any conflicts without needing to walk
> > > the entire stateid list.
> > >
> > > The only time we'll need to walk the entire list of stateids is when
> > > a
> > stateid
> > > that has a deny mode on it is being released, or one is having its
> > > deny
> > mode
> > > downgraded. In that case, we must walk the entire list and
> > > recalculate the fi_share_deny field. Since deny modes are pretty
> > > rare today, this should
> > be
> > > very rare under normal workloads.
> >
> > What we do in Ganesha to avoid walking the list of stateids on release
> > is maintain the effective deny (and access) mode not at bits, but as a
> > counter for each bit. Thus, to remove a SHARE_ACCESS_READ |
> > SHARE_DENY_WRITE, you decrement the counts for access_read and
> deny_write.
> >
> > Frank
> >
> >
> 
> Sure, that's another possibility that I considered, but I didn't want to
be
> bothered with having to add counters for deny modes. In practice there are
> *no* clients that use them (aside from pynfs and maybe the semi-mythical
> Windows v4.1 client).
> 
> With this scheme, deny mode enforcement is pretty darned efficient,
> particularly in the common case where there are no deny modes to enforce.
> 
> Any penalty for the use of deny modes is generally paid during the CLOSE
or
> OPEN_DOWNGRADE on behalf of the client that's using them.
> Any RPC from a client that's not won't need to do any extra work (aside
from
> maybe spinning on the fi_lock while another client is having to
recalculate the
> fi_share_deny).

Good point.

Whatever happened to Pavel Shilovsky's O_DENY patch set? I was looking
forward to that for allowing Ganesha and Samba share reservations to more
fully interact with each other...

Frank