Re: [PATCH 5/5] fs/xfs: Allow toggle of physical DAX flag

Ira Weiny
2019-11-08T19:36:19Z

On Fri, Nov 08, 2019 at 02:46:06PM +0100, Jan Kara wrote:
> On Fri 08-11-19 14:12:38, Jan Kara wrote:
> > On Mon 21-10-19 15:49:31, Ira Weiny wrote:
> > > On Mon, Oct 21, 2019 at 11:45:36AM +1100, Dave Chinner wrote:
> > > > On Sun, Oct 20, 2019 at 08:59:35AM -0700, ira.weiny@intel.com wrote:
> > > > That, fundamentally, is the issue here - it's not setting/clearing
> > > > the DAX flag that is the issue, it's doing a swap of the
> > > > mapping->a_ops while there may be other code using that ops
> > > > structure.
> > > >
> > > > IOWs, if there is any code anywhere in the kernel that
> > > > calls an address space op without holding one of the three locks we
> > > > hold here (i_rwsem, MMAPLOCK, ILOCK) then it can race with the swap
> > > > of the address space operations.
> > > >
> > > > By limiting the address space swap to file sizes of zero, we rule
> > > > out the page fault path (mmap of a zero length file segv's with an
> > > > access beyond EOF on the first read/write page fault, right?).
> > >
> > > Yes I checked that and thought we were safe here...
> > >
> > > > However, other aops callers that might run unlocked and do the wrong
> > > > thing if the aops pointer is swapped between check of the aop method
> > > > existing and actually calling it even if the file size is zero?
> > > >
> > > > A quick look shows that FIBMAP (ioctl_fibmap())) looks susceptible
> > > > to such a race condition with the current definitions of the XFS DAX
> > > > aops. I'm guessing there will be others, but I haven't looked
> > > > further than this...
> > >
> > > I'll check for others and think on what to do about this. ext4 will have the
> > > same problem I think. :-(
> >
> > Just as a datapoint, ext4 is bold and sets inode->i_mapping->a_ops on
> > existing inodes when switching journal data flag and so far it has not
> > blown up. What we did to deal with issues Dave describes is that we
> > introduced percpu rw-semaphore guarding switching of aops and then inside
> > problematic functions redirect callbacks in the right direction under this
> > semaphore. Somewhat ugly but it seems to work.

Ah I am glad you brought this up. I had not seen this before.

Is that s_journal_flag_rwsem?

In the general case I don't think that correctly protects against:

if (a_ops->call)
a_ops->call();

Because not all operations are defined in both ext4_aops and
ext4_journalled_aops. Specifically migratepage.

move_to_new_page() specifically follows the pattern above with migratepage. So
is there a bug here?

>
> Thinking about this some more, perhaps this scheme could be actually
> transformed in something workable. We could have a global (or maybe per-sb
> but I'm not sure it's worth it) percpu rwsem and we could transform aops
> calls into:
>
> percpu_down_read(aops_rwsem);
> do_call();
> percpu_up_read(aops_rwsem);
>
> With some macro magic it needn't be even that ugly.

I think this is safer. And what I have been investigating/coding up. Because
that also would protect against the above with:

percpu_down_read(aops_rwsem);
if (a_ops->call)
a_ops->call();
percpu_up_read(aops_rwsem);

However I have been looking at SRCU because we also have patterns like:

generic_file_buffered_read
if (a_ops->is_partially_uptodate)
a_ops->is_partially_uptodate()
page_cache_sync_readahead
force_page_cache_readahead
if (!a_ops->readpage && !a_ops->readpages)
return;
__do_page_cache_readahead
read_pages
if (a_ops->readpages)
a_ops->readpages()
a_ops->readpage

So we would have to pass the a_ops through to use a rwsem. Where SRCU I think
would be fine to just take the SRCU read lock multiple times. Am I wrong?

We also have a 3rd (2nd?) issue. There are callers who check for the presence
of an operation to be used later. For example do_dentry_open():

do_dentry_open()
{
...
if (<flags> & O_DIRECT)
if (!<a_ops> || !<a_ops>->direct_IO)
return -EINVAL;
...
}

After this open direct_IO better be there AFAICT so changing the a_ops later
would not be good. For ext4 direct_IO is defined for all the a_ops... so I
guess that is not a big deal. However, is the user really getting the behavior
they expect in this case?

I'm afraid of requiring FSs to have to follow rules in defining their a_ops.
Because I'm afraid maintaining those rules would be hard and would eventually
lead to crashes when someone did it wrong.

:-/

So for this 3rd (2nd) case I think we should simply take a reference to the
a_ops and fail changing the mode. For the DAX case that means the user is best
served by taking a write lease on the file to ensure there are no other opens
which could cause issues.

Would that work for changing the journaling mode?

And I _think_ this is the only issue we have with this right now. But if other
callers of a_ops needed the pattern of using the a_ops at a time across context
changes they would need to ensure this reference was taken.

What I have come up with thus far is an interface like:

/*
* as_get_a_ops() -- safely get the a_ops from the address_space specified
*
* @as: address space to get a_ops from
* @ref: used to indicate if a reference is required on this a_ops
* @tok: srcu token to be returned in as_put_a_ops()
*
* The a_ops returned is protected from changing until as_put_a_ops().
*
* If ref is specified then ref must also be specified in as_put_a_ops() to
* release this reference. In this case a reference is taken on the a_ops
* which will prevent it from changing until the reference is released.
*
* References should _ONLY_ be taken when the a_ops needs to be constant
* across a user context switch because doing so will block changing the a_ops
* until that reference is released.
*
* Examples of using a reference are checks for specific a_ops pointers which
* are expected to support functionality at a later date (example direct_IO)
*/
static inline const struct address_space_operations *
as_get_a_ops(struct address_space *as, bool ref, int *tok)
{
...
}

static inline void
as_assign_a_ops(struct address_space *as,
const struct address_space_operations *a_ops)
{
...
}

static inline void as_put_a_ops(struct address_space *as, int tok, bool ref)
{
...
}

I'm still working out the details of using SRCU and a ref count. I have made
at least 1 complete pass of all the a_ops users and I think this would cover
them all.

Thoughts?
Ira

>
> Honza
> --
> Jan Kara <jack@suse.com>
> SUSE Labs, CR