From: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
To: Carlos Maiolino <cem@kernel.org>, Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>
Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>,
"Martin K. Petersen" <martin.petersen@oracle.com>,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-xfs@vger.kernel.org,
linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-raid@vger.kernel.org,
linux-block@vger.kernel.org
Subject: fall back from direct to buffered I/O when stable writes are required
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2025 08:15:01 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20251029071537.1127397-1-hch@lst.de> (raw)
Hi all,
we've had a long standing issue that direct I/O to and from devices that
require stable writes can corrupt data because the user memory can be
modified while in flight. This series tries to address this by falling
back to uncached buffered I/O. Given that this requires an extra copy it
is usually going to be a slow down, especially for very high bandwith
use cases, so I'm not exactly happy about.
I suspect we need a way to opt out of this for applications that know
what they are doing, and I can think of a few ways to do that:
1a) Allow a mount option to override the behavior
This allows the sysadmin to get back to the previous state.
This is fairly easy to implement, but the scope might be to wide.
1b) Sysfs attribute
Same as above. Slightly easier to modify, but a more unusual
interface.
2) Have a per-inode attribute
Allows to set it on a specific file. Would require an on-disk
format change for the usual attr options.
3) Have a fcntl or similar to allow an application to override it
Fine granularity. Requires application change. We might not
allow any application to force this as it could be used to inject
corruption.
In other words, they are all kinda horrible.
Diffstat:
fs/ext4/file.c | 2 -
fs/xfs/xfs_file.c | 59 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---------
fs/xfs/xfs_iops.c | 6 +++++
include/linux/fs.h | 11 +++++----
io_uring/io_uring.c | 2 -
5 files changed, 63 insertions(+), 17 deletions(-)
next reply other threads:[~2025-10-29 7:15 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 51+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2025-10-29 7:15 Christoph Hellwig [this message]
2025-10-29 7:15 ` [PATCH 1/4] fs: replace FOP_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE with a fmode bits Christoph Hellwig
2025-10-29 16:01 ` Darrick J. Wong
2025-11-04 7:00 ` Nirjhar Roy (IBM)
2025-11-05 14:04 ` Christoph Hellwig
2025-11-11 9:44 ` Christian Brauner
2025-10-29 7:15 ` [PATCH 2/4] fs: return writeback errors for IOCB_DONTCACHE in generic_write_sync Christoph Hellwig
2025-10-29 16:01 ` Darrick J. Wong
2025-10-29 16:37 ` Christoph Hellwig
2025-10-29 18:12 ` Darrick J. Wong
2025-10-30 5:59 ` Christoph Hellwig
2025-11-04 12:04 ` Nirjhar Roy (IBM)
2025-11-04 15:53 ` Christoph Hellwig
2025-10-29 7:15 ` [PATCH 3/4] xfs: use IOCB_DONTCACHE when falling back to buffered writes Christoph Hellwig
2025-10-29 15:57 ` Darrick J. Wong
2025-11-04 12:33 ` Nirjhar Roy (IBM)
2025-11-04 15:52 ` Christoph Hellwig
2025-10-29 7:15 ` [PATCH 4/4] xfs: fallback to buffered I/O for direct I/O when stable writes are required Christoph Hellwig
2025-10-29 15:53 ` Darrick J. Wong
2025-10-29 16:35 ` Christoph Hellwig
2025-10-29 21:23 ` Qu Wenruo
2025-10-30 5:58 ` Christoph Hellwig
2025-10-30 6:37 ` Qu Wenruo
2025-10-30 6:49 ` Christoph Hellwig
2025-10-30 6:53 ` Qu Wenruo
2025-10-30 6:55 ` Christoph Hellwig
2025-10-30 7:14 ` Qu Wenruo
2025-10-30 7:17 ` Christoph Hellwig
2025-11-10 13:38 ` Nirjhar Roy (IBM)
2025-11-10 13:59 ` Christoph Hellwig
2025-10-29 15:58 ` fall back from direct to buffered " Bart Van Assche
2025-10-29 16:14 ` Darrick J. Wong
2025-10-29 16:33 ` Christoph Hellwig
2025-10-30 11:20 ` Dave Chinner
2025-10-30 12:00 ` Geoff Back
2025-10-30 12:54 ` Jan Kara
2025-10-30 14:35 ` Christoph Hellwig
2025-10-30 22:02 ` Dave Chinner
2025-10-30 14:33 ` Christoph Hellwig
2025-10-30 23:18 ` Dave Chinner
2025-10-31 13:00 ` Christoph Hellwig
2025-10-31 15:57 ` Keith Busch
2025-10-31 16:47 ` Christoph Hellwig
2025-11-03 11:14 ` Jan Kara
2025-11-03 12:21 ` Christoph Hellwig
2025-11-03 22:47 ` Keith Busch
2025-11-04 23:38 ` Darrick J. Wong
2025-11-05 14:11 ` Christoph Hellwig
2025-11-05 21:44 ` Darrick J. Wong
2025-11-06 9:50 ` Johannes Thumshirn
2025-11-06 12:49 ` hch
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