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Re: [PATCH] bulkstat fixups

To: lachlan@xxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [PATCH] bulkstat fixups
From: Lachlan McIlroy <lachlan@xxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 15:42:54 +1100
Cc: David Chinner <dgc@xxxxxxx>, xfs-dev <xfs-dev@xxxxxxx>, xfs-oss <xfs@xxxxxxxxxxx>
In-reply-to: <473D1DE0.1090106@sgi.com>
References: <4733EEF2.9010504@sgi.com> <20071111214759.GS995458@sgi.com> <4737C11D.8030007@sgi.com> <20071112041121.GT66820511@sgi.com> <473D1DE0.1090106@sgi.com>
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Forgot to mention - this patch is just fs/xfs/xfs_itable.c.  That's the
only file that has been updated since the last patch.

Lachlan McIlroy wrote:
Updated patch - I added cond_resched() calls into each loop - for loops that
have a 'continue' somewhere in them I added the cond_resched() at the start,
otherwise I put it at the end.


David Chinner wrote:
On Mon, Nov 12, 2007 at 01:57:33PM +1100, Lachlan McIlroy wrote:
David Chinner wrote:
[Lachlan, can you wrap your email text at 72 columns for ease of quoting?]

On Fri, Nov 09, 2007 at 04:24:02PM +1100, Lachlan McIlroy wrote:
Here's a collection of fixups for bulkstat for all the remaining issues.

- sanity check for NULL user buffer in xfs_ioc_bulkstat[_compat]()
OK.

- remove the special case for XFS_IOC_FSBULKSTAT with count == 1. This special
case causes bulkstat to fail because the special case uses xfs_bulkstat_single()
instead of xfs_bulkstat() and the two functions have different semantics.
xfs_bulkstat() will return the next inode after the one supplied while skipping
internal inodes (ie quota inodes). xfs_bulkstate_single() will only lookup the
inode supplied and return an error if it is an internal inode.
Userspace visile change. What applications do we have that rely on this
behaviour that will be broken by this change?
Any apps that rely on the existing behaviour are probably broken. If an app
wants to call xfs_bulkstat_single() it should use XFS_IOC_FSBULKSTAT_SINGLE.

Perhaps, but we can't arbitrarily decide that those apps will now break on
a new kernel with this change. At minimum we need to audit all of the code
we have that uses bulkstat for such breakage (including DMF!) before we make a
change like this.

I've looked through everything we have in xfs-cmds and nothing relies on this bug being present. Vlad helped me with the DMF side - DMF does not use the XFS_IOC_FSBULKSTAT ioctl, it has it's own interface into the kernel which calls xfs_bulkstat() directly so it wont be affected by this change.


- checks against 'ubleft' (the space left in the user's buffer) should be against
'statstruct_size' which is the supplied minimum object size. The mixture of
checks against statstruct_size and 0 was one of the reasons we were skipping
inodes.
Can you wrap these checks in a static inline function so that it is obvious
what the correct way to check is and we don't reintroduce this porblem? i.e.


static inline int
xfs_bulkstat_ubuffer_large_enough(ssize_t space)
{
    return (space > sizeof(struct blah));
}

That will also remove a stack variable....
That won't work - statstruct_size is passed into xfs_bulkstat() so we don't
know what 'blah' is. Maybe a macro would be easier.


#define XFS_BULKSTAT_UBLEFT (ubleft >= statstruct_size)

Yeah, something like that, but I don't like macros with no parameters used
like that....


FWIW - missing from this set of patches - cpu_relax() in the loops. In the case
where no I/O is required to do the scan, we can hold the cpu for a long time
and that will hold off I/O completion, etc for the cpu bulkstat is running on.
Hence after every cluster we scan we should cpu_relax() to allow other
processes cpu time on that cpu.


I don't get how cpu_relax() works. I see that it is called at times with a
spinlock held so it wont trigger a context switch. Does it give interrupts a chance to run?

Sorry, my mistake - confused cpu_relax() with cond_resched(). take the above
paragraph and s/cpu_relax/cond_resched/g


It appears to be used where a minor delay is needed - I don't think we have any
cases in xfs_bulkstat() where we need to wait for an event that isn't I/O.

The issue is when we're hitting cached buffers and we never end up waiting
for I/O - we will then monopolise the cpu we are running on and hold off
all other processing. It's antisocial and leads to high latencies for other
code.


Cheers,

Dave.


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