Re: [PATCH 1 of 2] Implement generic block_page_mkwrite() functionality

Chris Mason
2007-02-07T16:49:09Z

On Thu, Feb 08, 2007 at 01:44:15AM +1100, David Chinner wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 01:00:28PM +0000, Hugh Dickins wrote:
> > On Wed, 7 Feb 2007, David Chinner wrote:
> >
> > > On Christoph's suggestion, take the guts of the proposed
> > > xfs_vm_page_mkwrite function and implement it as a generic
> > > core function as it used no specific XFS code at all.
> > >
> > > This allows any filesystem to easily hook the ->page_mkwrite()
> > > VM callout to allow them to set up pages dirtied by mmap
> > > writes correctly for later writeout.
> > >
> > > Signed-Off-By: Dave Chinner <dgc@sgi.com>
> >
> > I'm worried about concurrent truncation. Isn't it the case that
> > i_mutex is held when prepare_write and commit_write are normally
> > called? But not here when page_mkwrite is called.
>
> I'm not holding i_mutex. I assumed that it was probably safe to do
> because we are likely to be reading the page off disk just before we
> call mkwrite and that has to be synchronised with truncate in some
> manner....

In general, commit_write is allowed to update i_size, and prepare/commit
are called with i_mutex. block_prepare_write and block_commit_write
both look safe to me for calling with only the page lock held. It more
or less translates to: call get_block in a sane fashion and zero out the
parts of the page past eof.

But, if someone copies the code and puts their own fancy
prepare/commit_write in there, they will get in trouble in a hurry...

>
> So, do I need to grab the i_mutex here? Is that safe to do that in
> the middle of a page fault? If we do race with a truncate and the
> page is now beyond EOF, what am I supposed to return?

Should it check to make sure the page is still in the address space
after locking it?

-chris