[PATCH 3/3] xfs: allocate xfs_da_args to reduce stack footprint

[Christoph Hellwig]

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 03:16:42PM +1100, Dave Chinner wrote:
> From: Dave Chinner <dchinner at redhat.com>
> 
> The struct xfs_da_args used to pass directory/attribute operation
> information to the lower layers is 128 bytes in size and is
> allocated on the stack. Dynamically allocate them to reduce the
> stack footprint of directory operations.

Are we having stack space problems in the directory code as well,
without all the VM code above it?  I'm defintively a bit scared about
adding another memory allocation to every single directory operation.

> +	args = kmem_zalloc(sizeof(*args), KM_SLEEP | KM_NOFS);
> +	if (!args)
> +		return ENOMEM;

KM_SLEEP is the default when KM_NOFS is set.  Also KM_SLEEP will never
return a NULL pointer, either remove the handling or make it an
KM_MAYFAIL allocation.

> +	/*
> +	 * If we don't use KM_NOFS here, lockdep will through false positive
> +	 * deadlock warnings when we come through here of the non-transactional
> +	 * lookup path because the allocation can recurse into inode reclaim.
> +	 * Doing this avoids having to add a bunch of lockdep class
> +	 * annotations into the reclaim patch for the ilock.
> +	 */
> +	args = kmem_zalloc(sizeof(*args), KM_SLEEP | KM_NOFS);

I don't understand that comment.  We do use KM_NOFS here unlike what the
comment claims, and the comment seems to explain why we actually need
KM_NOFS as far as I can tell.