Re: [PATCH] dax: allow DAX to look up an inode's block device

Al Viro
2016-02-02T23:19:49Z

On Tue, Feb 02, 2016 at 04:11:42PM -0700, Ross Zwisler wrote:

> However, for raw block devices and for XFS with a real-time device, the
> value in inode->i_sb->s_bdev is not correct. With the code as it is
> currently written, an fsync or msync to a DAX enabled raw block device will
> cause a NULL pointer dereference kernel BUG. For this to work correctly we
> need to ask the block device or filesystem what struct block_device is
> appropriate for our inode.
>
> To that end, add a get_bdev(struct inode *) entry point to struct
> super_operations. If this function pointer is non-NULL, this notifies DAX
> that it needs to use it to look up the correct block_device. If
> i_sb->get_bdev() is NULL DAX will default to inode->i_sb->s_bdev.

Umm... It assumes that bdev will stay pinned for as long as inode is
referenced, presumably? If so, that needs to be documented (and verified
for existing fs instances). In principle, multi-disk fs might want to
support things like "silently move the inodes backed by that disk to other
ones"...