Re: [PATCH 01/14] xfs: fix sub-page blocksize data integrity writes

Ben Myers
2013-05-20T19:18:18Z

On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 02:02:59PM -0400, Brian Foster wrote:
> On 05/19/2013 07:51 PM, Dave Chinner wrote:
> > From: Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com>
> >
> > FSX on 512 byte block size filesystems has been failing for some
> > time with corrupted data. The fault dates back to the change in
> > the writeback data integrity algorithm that uses a mark-and-sweep
> > approach to avoid data writeback livelocks.
> >
> > Unfortunately, a side effect of this mark-and-sweep approach is that
> > each page will only be written once for a data integrity sync, and
> > there is a condition in writeback in XFS where a page may require
> > two writeback attempts to be fully written. As a result of the high
> > level change, we now only get a partial page writeback during the
> > integrity sync because the first pass through writeback clears the
> > mark left on the page index to tell writeback that the page needs
> > writeback....
> >
> > The cause is writing a partial page in the clustering code. This can
> > happen when a mapping boundary falls in the middle of a page - we
> > end up writing back the first part of the page that the mapping
> > covers, but then never revisit the page to have the remainder mapped
> > and written.
> >
> > The fix is simple - if the mapping boundary falls inside a page,
> > then simple abort clustering without touching the page. This means
> > that the next ->writepage entry that write_cache_pages() will make
> > is the page we aborted on, and xfs_vm_writepage() will map all
> > sections of the page correctly. This behaviour is also optimal for
> > non-data integrity writes, as it results in contiguous sequential
> > writeback of the file rather than missing small holes and having to
> > write them a "random" writes in a future pass.
> >
> > With this fix, all the fsx tests in xfstests now pass on a 512 byte
> > block size filesystem on a 4k page machine.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com>
> > ---
>
> Looks good to me.
>
> Reviewed-by: Brian Foster <bfoster@redhat.com>
>
> > fs/xfs/xfs_aops.c | 19 +++++++++++++++++++
> > 1 file changed, 19 insertions(+)
> >
> > diff --git a/fs/xfs/xfs_aops.c b/fs/xfs/xfs_aops.c
> > index 2b2691b..f04eceb 100644
> > --- a/fs/xfs/xfs_aops.c
> > +++ b/fs/xfs/xfs_aops.c
> > @@ -725,6 +725,25 @@ xfs_convert_page(
> > (xfs_off_t)(page->index + 1) << PAGE_CACHE_SHIFT,
> > i_size_read(inode));
> >
> > + /*
> > + * If the current map does not span the entire page we are about to try
> > + * to write, then give up. The only way we can write a page that spans
> > + * multiple mappings in a single writeback iteration is via the
> > + * xfs_vm_writepage() function. Data integrity writeback requires the
> > + * entire page to be written in a single attempt, otherwise the part of
> > + * the page we don't write here doesn't get written as part of the data
> > + * integrity sync.
> > + *
> > + * For normal writeback, we also don't attempt to write partial pages
> > + * here as it simply means that write_cache_pages() will see it under
> > + * writeback and ignore the page until some pointin the future, at which
> > + * time this will be the only page inteh file that needs writeback.
> > + * Hence for more optimal IO patterns, we should always avoid partial
> > + * page writeback due to multiple mappings on a page here.
> > + */

Applying this with a couple of spelling fixes in this comment.

Thanks for the reviews Brian.

-Ben