From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2019 22:33:07 -0700 From: Jason Gunthorpe Subject: Re: [LSF/MM TOPIC] Discuss least bad options for resolving longterm-GUP usage by RDMA Message-ID: <20190207053307.GB22726@ziepe.ca> References: <47820c4d696aee41225854071ec73373a273fd4a.camel@redhat.com> <01000168c43d594c-7979fcf8-b9c1-4bda-b29a-500efe001d66-000000@email.amazonses.com> <20190206210356.GZ6173@dastard> <20190206220828.GJ12227@ziepe.ca> <0c868bc615a60c44d618fb0183fcbe0c418c7c83.camel@redhat.com> <20190206232130.GK12227@ziepe.ca> <20190206234132.GB15234@ziepe.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org To: Dan Williams Cc: Doug Ledford , Dave Chinner , Christopher Lameter , Matthew Wilcox , Jan Kara , Ira Weiny , lsf-pc@lists.linux-foundation.org, linux-rdma , Linux MM , Linux Kernel Mailing List , John Hubbard , Jerome Glisse , Michal Hocko , linux-nvdimm List-ID: On Wed, Feb 06, 2019 at 04:22:16PM -0800, Dan Williams wrote: > On Wed, Feb 6, 2019 at 3:41 PM Jason Gunthorpe wrote: > [..] > > > You're describing the current situation, i.e. Linux already implements > > > this, it's called Device-DAX and some users of RDMA find it > > > insufficient. The choices are to continue to tell them "no", or say > > > "yes, but you need to submit to lease coordination". > > > > Device-DAX is not what I'm imagining when I say XFS--. > > > > I mean more like XFS with all features that require rellocation of > > blocks disabled. > > > > Forbidding hold punch, reflink, cow, etc, doesn't devolve back to > > device-dax. > > True, not all the way, but the distinction loses significance as you > lose fs features. > > Filesystems mark DAX functionality experimental [1] precisely because > it forbids otherwise typical operations that work in the nominal page > cache case. An approach that says "lets cement the list of things a > filesystem or a core-memory-mangement facility can't do because RDMA > finds it awkward" is bad precedent. I'm not saying these rules should apply globaly. I'm suggesting you could have a FS that supports gup_longterm by design, and a FS that doesn't. And that is OK. They can have different rules. Obviously the golden case here is to use ODP (which doesn't call gup_longterm at all) - that works for both. Supporting non-ODP is a trade off case - users that want to run on limited HW must accept limited functionality. Limited functionality is better than no-funtionality. Linux has many of these user-choose tradeoffs. This is how it supports such a wide range of HW capabilities. Not all HW can do all things. Some features really do need HW support. It has always been that way. Jason