Re: [PATCH v4 10/12] dax: add struct iomap based DAX PMD support

Jan Kara
2016-10-07T07:44:22Z

On Thu 06-10-16 20:58:33, Ross Zwisler wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 06, 2016 at 03:34:24PM -0600, Ross Zwisler wrote:
> > Interesting - adding iomap_end() calls to the DAX PTE fault handler causes an
> > AA deadlock because we try and retake ei->dax_sem. We take dax_sem in
> > ext2_dax_fault() before calling into the DAX code, then if we end up going
> > through the error path in ext2_iomap_end(), we call
> > ext2_write_failed()
> > ext2_truncate_blocks()
> > dax_sem_down_write()
> >
> > Where we try and take dax_sem again. This error path is really only valid for
> > I/O operations, but we happen to call it for page faults because 'written' in
> > ext2_iomap_end() is just 0.
> >
> > So...how should we handle this? A few ideas:
> >
> > 1) Just continue to omit the calls to iomap_end() in the DAX page fault
> > handlers for now, and add them when there is useful work to be done in one of
> > the filesystems.
> >
> > 2) Add an IOMAP_FAULT flag to the flags passed into iomap_begin() and
> > iomap_end() so make it explicit that we are calling as part of a fault handler
> > and not an I/O operation, and use this to adjust the error handling in
> > ext2_iomap_end().
> >
> > 3) Just work around the existing error handling in ext2_iomap_end() by either
> > unsetting IOMAP_WRITE or by setting 'written' to the size of the fault.
> >
> > For #2 or #3, probably add a comment explaining the deadlock and why we need
> > to never call ext2_write_failed() while handling a page fault.
> >
> > Thoughts?
>
> Never mind, #3 it is, I think it was just a plain bug to call iomap_end() with
> 'length' != 'written'.

Yup, that's what I'd think as well.

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