Re: [PATCH][RFC 23/23]: Support for zero-copy TCP transmit of user space data

Vladislav Bolkhovitin
2008-12-23T19:17:14Z

Evgeniy Polyakov, on 12/20/2008 01:32 PM wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 07:10:45PM +1100, Herbert Xu (herbert@gondor.apana.org.au) wrote:
>>> Hm. So if I get a destructor call from the shared_info, can I go an
>>> inspect the page refcounts to see if its really the last use?
>> The pages that were originally in the shared_info at creation
>> time may no longer be there by the time it's freed because of
>> pskb_pull_tail.
>
> Things should work fine, since pskb_expand_head() copies whole shared
> info structure (and thus will copy destructor), get all pages and then
> copy all pointers into the new skb, and then release old skb's data.
>
> So destructor for the pages should not rely on which skb it is called on
> and check if pages are about to be really freed (i.e. check theirs
> reference counter).
>
> __pskb_pull_tail() is tricky, it just puts some pages it does not want
> to be present in the skb, but it could be possible to add there
> destructor callback from the original skb with partial flag (or just
> having destructor with two parameters: skb and page, and if page is not
> NULL, then actually only given page is freed, otherwise the whole skb).

Actually, there's another way, which seems to be a lot simpler. Alexey
Kuznetsov privately suggested it to me.

In skb_shared_info new pointer transaction_token would be added, which
would point on:

struct sk_transaction_token
{
atomic_t io_count;
struct sk_transaction_token *next;
unsigned long token;
unsigned long private;
void (*finish_callback)(struct sk_transaction_token *);
};

When skb is translated, transaction_token inherited. If 2 skb are merged
(the same places where I put net_get_page's in my patch), the *older*
token is inherited. This is the main point of this idea.

Before starting new asynchronous send a client would open a new token.
Everything sent then would receive that token. Finish_callback() would
be called and the corresponding token freed, when io_count == 0 *AND*
all previous tokens closed.

This idea seems to be simpler, than even what Rusty implemented. Correct
me, if I wrong. But, unfortunately, in the near future I will have no
time to develop it.. :-(

Vlad