Re: [PATCH 04/19] fs: Implement lazy LRU updates for inodes.

Christoph Hellwig
2010-10-16T16:59:32Z

On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 08:29:16PM +1100, Nick Piggin wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 07:13:58PM +1100, Dave Chinner wrote:
> > @@ -502,11 +527,15 @@ static void prune_icache(int nr_to_scan)
> > iput(inode);
> > spin_lock(&inode_lock);
> >
> > - if (inode != list_entry(inode_unused.next,
> > - struct inode, i_list))
> > - continue; /* wrong inode or list_empty */
> > - if (!can_unuse(inode))
> > + /*
> > + * if we can't reclaim this inode immediately, give it
> > + * another pass through the free list so we don't spin
> > + * on it.
> > + */
> > + if (!can_unuse(inode)) {
> > + list_move(&inode->i_list, &inode_unused);
> > continue;
> > + }
> > }
> > list_move(&inode->i_list, &freeable);
> > WARN_ON(inode->i_state & I_NEW);
>
> This is a bug, actually 2 bugs, which is why I omitted it in the version
> you picked up. I agree we want the optimisation though, so I've added it
> back in my tree.
>
> After you iput() and then re take the inode lock, you can't reference
> the inode because you don't know what happened to it. You need to keep
> that pointer check to verify it is still there.

I don't think the pointer check will work either. By the time we retake
the lru lock the inode might already have been reaped through a call
to invalidate_inodes. There's no way we can do anything with it after
iput. What we could do is using variant of can_unuse to decide to move
the inode to the front of the lru before doing the iput. That way
we'll get to it next after retaking the lru lock if it's still there.