Re: [PATCH 0/23] File descriptor hot-unplug support v2

Al Viro
2009-06-08T18:51:25Z

On Mon, Jun 08, 2009 at 11:01:51AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, 8 Jun 2009, Al Viro wrote:
> >
> > Welcome to reality...
> >
> > * bread() is non-interruptible
> > * so's copy_from_user()/copy_to_user()
> > * IO we are stuck upon _might_ be interruptible, but by sending a signal
> > to some other process
>
> We can probably improve on these, though.
>
> Like the copy_to/from_user thing. We might well be able to do that whole
> "if it's a fatal signal, return early" thing.
>
> So in the _general_ case - no, we probably can't fix things. But we could
> likely at least improve in some common cases if we cared.

Sure, even though I'm not at all certain that copy_from_user() is that easy.
We can make locking current->mm in there interruptible, all right, but that's
only a part of the answer - even aside of the allocations, we'd need vma
->fault() interruptible as well, which leads to interruptible instances of
->readpage(), with all the fun _that_ would be.