Re: [PATCH v3 00/13] dax: fix dma vs truncate and remove 'page-less' support

[Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>]

On Mon, Oct 30, 2017 at 4:20 AM, Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 30, 2017 at 09:38:07AM +0100, Jan Kara wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Mon 30-10-17 13:00:23, Dave Chinner wrote:
>> > On Sun, Oct 29, 2017 at 04:46:44PM -0700, Dan Williams wrote:
>> > > Coming back to this since Dave has made clear that new locking to
>> > > coordinate get_user_pages() is a no-go.
>> > >
>> > > We can unmap to force new get_user_pages() attempts to block on the
>> > > per-fs mmap lock, but if punch-hole finds any elevated pages it needs
>> > > to drop the mmap lock and wait. We need this lock dropped to get
>> > > around the problem that the driver will not start to drop page
>> > > references until it has elevated the page references on all the pages
>> > > in the I/O. If we need to drop the mmap lock that makes it impossible
>> > > to coordinate this unlock/retry loop within truncate_inode_pages_range
>> > > which would otherwise be the natural place to land this code.
>> > >
>> > > Would it be palatable to unmap and drain dma in any path that needs to
>> > > detach blocks from an inode? Something like the following that builds
>> > > on dax_wait_dma() tried to achieve, but does not introduce a new lock
>> > > for the fs to manage:
>> > >
>> > > retry:
>> > >     per_fs_mmap_lock(inode);
>> > >     unmap_mapping_range(mapping, start, end); /* new page references
>> > > cannot be established */
>> > >     if ((dax_page = dax_dma_busy_page(mapping, start, end)) != NULL) {
>> > >         per_fs_mmap_unlock(inode); /* new page references can happen,
>> > > so we need to start over */
>> > >         wait_for_page_idle(dax_page);
>> > >         goto retry;
>> > >     }
>> > >     truncate_inode_pages_range(mapping, start, end);
>> > >     per_fs_mmap_unlock(inode);
>> >
>> > These retry loops you keep proposing are just bloody horrible.  They
>> > are basically just a method for blocking an operation until whatever
>> > condition is preventing the invalidation goes away. IMO, that's an
>> > ugly solution no matter how much lipstick you dress it up with.
>> >
>> > i.e. the blocking loops mean the user process is going to be blocked
>> > for arbitrary lengths of time. That's not a solution, it's just
>> > passing the buck - now the userspace developers need to work around
>> > truncate/hole punch being randomly blocked for arbitrary lengths of
>> > time.
>>
>> So I see substantial difference between how you and Christoph think this
>> should be handled. Christoph writes in [1]:
>>
>> The point is that we need to prohibit long term elevated page counts
>> with DAX anyway - we can't just let people grab allocated blocks forever
>> while ignoring file system operations.  For stage 1 we'll just need to
>> fail those, and in the long run they will have to use a mechanism
>> similar to FL_LAYOUT locks to deal with file system allocation changes.
>>
>> So Christoph wants to block truncate until references are released, forbid
>> long term references until userspace acquiring them supports some kind of
>> lease-breaking. OTOH you suggest truncate should just proceed leaving
>> blocks allocated until references are released.
>
> I don't see what I'm suggesting is a solution to long term elevated
> page counts. Just something that can park extents until layout
> leases are broken and references released. That's a few tens of
> seconds at most.
>
>> We cannot have both... I'm leaning more towards the approach
>> Christoph suggests as it puts the burned to the place which is
>> causing it - the application having long term references - and
>> applications needing this should be sufficiently rare that we
>> don't have to devise a general mechanism in the kernel for this.
>
> I have no problems with blocking truncate forever if that's the
> desired solution for an elevated page count due to a DMA reference
> to a page. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the filesystem
> though - it's a page reference vs mapping invalidation problem, not
> a filesystem/inode problem.
>
> Perhaps pages with active DAX DMA mapping references need a page
> flag to indicate that invalidation must block on the page similar to
> the writeback flag...

We effectively already have this flag since pages where
is_zone_device_page() == true can only have their reference count
elevated by get_user_pages().

More importantly we can not block invalidation on an elevated page
count because that page count may never drop until all references have
been acquired. I.e. iov_iter_get_pages() grabs a range of pages
potentially across multiple vmas and does not drop any references in
the range until all pages have had their count elevated.

>> If the solution Christoph suggests is acceptable to you, I think
>> we should first write a patch to forbid acquiring long term
>> references to DAX blocks.  On top of that we can implement
>> mechanism to block truncate while there are short term references
>> pending (and for that retry loops would be IMHO acceptable).
>
> The problem with retry loops is that they are making a mess of an
> already complex set of locking contraints on the indoe IO path. It's
> rapidly descending into an unmaintainable mess - falling off the
> locking cliff only make sthe code harder to maintain - please look
> for solutions that don't require new locks or lock retry loops.

I was hoping to make the retry loop no worse than the one we already
perform for xfs_break_layouts(), and then the approach can be easily
shared between ext4 and xfs.

However before we get there, we need quite a bit of reworks (require
struct page for dax, use pfns in the dax radix, disable long held page
reference counts for DAX i.e. RDMA / V4L2...). I'll submit those
preparation steps first and then we can circle back to the "how to
wait for DAX-DMA to end" problem.
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