Re: [patch] cache flush bug in mm/filemap.c (all kernels >= 2.5.30(at least))

[Jens Axboe <axboe@suse.de>]

On Mon, May 26 2003, Russell King wrote:
> On Sun, May 25, 2003 at 08:19:32PM -0700, David S. Miller wrote:
> > Oh yes, this part is.  If you don't ensure this, everything
> > breaks.
> > 
> > At the end of an I/O operation, say to a page cache page, that
> > data ought to be visible equally to a userspace vs. a kernel
> > space mapping to that page.
> > 
> > For example, this is why we use language about "cpu visibility" in the
> > DMA api documentation and not "kernel cpu visibility" :-)  And because
> > PIO transfers are basically pseudo-DMA they need to make the same exact
> > guarentees.
> > 
> > If you've been living in a world where you didn't think this is
> > necessary, I certainly feel bad for you :-)
> 
> Ok, so the flush_dcache_page() interface looses this; the original
> placement of the flush_page_to_ram() ensured that data written by
> device drivers was visible to user space.
> 
> Maybe the BIO layer can handle this - the same problem exists when
> (and if) BIO uses a bounce buffer, so it would have to be handled
> there.  Jens?

For bouncing it's relatively trivial to add (and probably should, feel
free...). PIO etc is really a driver problem to handle, I don't see how
that could be handled generically.

-- 
Jens Axboe