Re: [PATCH v4 1/3] FUSE: Implement atomic lookup + create

From: Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@redhat.com>
To: Bernd Schubert <bschubert@ddn.com>
Cc: Dharmendra Hans <dharamhans87@gmail.com>,
	Miklos Szeredi <miklos@szeredi.hu>,
	linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
	fuse-devel <fuse-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Dharmendra Singh <dsingh@ddn.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 1/3] FUSE: Implement atomic lookup + create
Date: Wed, 4 May 2022 13:31:08 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <YnK4XIk0M3Dx5RP+@redhat.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <8003098d-6b17-5cdf-866d-06fefdf1ca31@ddn.com>

On Wed, May 04, 2022 at 05:46:27PM +0200, Bernd Schubert wrote:
> 
> 
> On 5/4/22 16:47, Vivek Goyal wrote:
> 
> > Ok, naming is little confusing. I think we will have to put it in
> > commit message and where you define FUSE_ATOMIC_CREATE that what's
> > the difference between FUSE_CREATE and FUSE_ATOMIC_CREATE. This is
> > ATOMIC w.r.t what?
> > 
> > May be atomic here means that "lookup + create + open" is a single operation.
> > But then even FUSE_CREATE is atomic because "creat + open" is a single
> > operation.
> > 
> > In fact FUSE_CREATE does lookup anyway and returns all the information
> > in fuse_entry_out.
> > 
> > IIUC, only difference between FUSE_CREATE and FUSE_ATOMIC_CREATE is that
> > later also carries information in reply whether file was actually created
> > or not (FOPEN_FILE_CREATED). This will be set if file did not exist
> > already and it was created indeed. Is that right?
> > 
> > I see FOPEN_FILE_CREATED is being used to avoid calling
> > fuse_dir_changed(). That sounds like a separate optimization and probably
> > should be in a separate patch.
> > 
> > IOW, I think this patch should be broken in to multiple pieces. First
> > piece seems to be avoiding lookup() and given the way it is implemented,
> > looks like we can avoid lookup() even by using existing FUSE_CREATE
> > command. We don't necessarily need FUSE_ATOMIC_CREATE. Is that right?
> 
> The initial non-published patches had that, but I had actually asked not to
> go that route, because I'm scared that some user space file system
> implementations might get broken.

> Right now there is always a lookup before
> fuse_create_open() and when the resulting dentry is positive
> fuse_create_open/FUSE_CREATE is bypassed. I.e. user space implementations
> didn't need to handle existing files.

Hmm..., So if dentry is positive, we will call FUSE_OPEN instead in 
current code.

Now with this change, we will call FUSE_CREATE and file could still
be present. If it is a shared filesystem, file could be created by
another client anyway after lookup() completed and returned a non-existent
file. So server can still get FUSE_CREATE and file could be there.

But I understand that risk of regression is not zero. 

Given we are going to implement FUSE_CREATE_EXT in the same patch
series, I guess we could fix it easily by switching to FUSE_CREATE_EXT.

So that's my take. I will be willing to take this chance. Until and
unless ofcourse Miklos disagrees. :-)

Thanks
Vivek

> Out of the sudden user space
> implementations might need to handle it and some of them might get broken
> with that kernel update. I guess even a single broken user space
> implementation would count as regression.
> So I had asked to change the patch to require a user space flag.
> 
> -- Bernd
> 