[PATCH 1/5] [XFS] Use xfs_sync_inodes() for device flushing

[Dave Chinner]

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 12:14:51PM -0400, Mikulas Patocka wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Mar 2009, Dave Chinner wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 09:08:36AM -0400, Mikulas Patocka wrote:
> > > On Sun, 15 Mar 2009, Dave Chinner wrote:
> What I find scary is those two recursive pagelocks being held without 
> trylock. The sequence is like:
> 
> lock iolock 1
> lock pagelock 1
> --- submit request to xfssyncd, that does
> trylock iolock 2
> lock pagelock 2

Those two pages will be on different inodes, so locking through all
paths to pagelock 2 except for page writeback will be protected by the iolocks...

> ... now suppose that this is racing with another process that takes 
> pagelock without taking iolock first (memory manager trying to flush files 
> mmaped for write or so). It can do
> 
> lock pagelock 2
> ... and submit flush request to a thread that is actually waiting to get 
> pagelock 2.

Which, AFAIK, is never done in XFS. Once we have a page locked in
the writeback path we either dispatch it in an IO or unlock it
directly before continuing. There should not be a case like you
describe occurring (it is a bug if that does happen).

> --- I don't know --- is there a possibility to reserve filesystem space 
> for write-mapped files at the time of the first page fault? (so that the 
> space won't be allocated at the time of a flush?).

->page_mkwrite

Cheers,

Dave.
-- 
Dave Chinner
david at fromorbit.com