Re: [Lsf-pc] [LSF/MM TOPIC] The end of the DAX experiment

From: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
To: Goldwyn Rodrigues <rgoldwyn@suse.de>
Cc: Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>,
	Jerome Glisse <jglisse@redhat.com>,
	Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>,
	lsf-pc@lists.linux-foundation.org,
	linux-xfs <linux-xfs@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-ext4 <linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-nvdimm <linux-nvdimm@lists.01.org>
Subject: Re: [Lsf-pc] [LSF/MM TOPIC] The end of the DAX experiment
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2019 23:00:35 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAPcyv4gZSsAA+GE9otf=WfKSkGMcTbxgdgSCErNys4sOCdCzuA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20190605162204.jzou5hry5exly5wx@fiona>

On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 9:22 AM Goldwyn Rodrigues <rgoldwyn@suse.de> wrote:
>
> Hi Dan/Jerome,
>
> On 12:20 14/02, Dan Williams wrote:
> > On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 12:09 PM Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 11:31:24AM -0800, Dan Williams wrote:
> > > > On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 11:10 AM Jerome Glisse <jglisse@redhat.com> wrote:
> > > > > I am just again working on my struct page mapping patchset as well as
> > > > > the generic page write protection that sits on top. I hope to be able
> > > > > to post the v2 in couple weeks. You can always look at my posting last
> > > > > year to see more details.
> > > >
> > > > Yes, I have that in mind as one of the contenders. However, it's not
> > > > clear to me that its a suitable fit for filesystem-reflink. Others
> > > > have floated the 'page proxy' idea, so it would be good to discuss the
> > > > merits of the general approaches.
> > >
> > > ... and my preferred option of putting pfn entries in the page cache.
> >
> > Another option to include the discussion.
> >
> > > Or is that what you meant by "page proxy"?
> >
> > Page proxy would be an object that a filesystem could allocate to
> > point back to a single physical 'struct page *'. The proxy would
> > contain an override for page->index.
>
> Was there any outcome on this and its implementation? I am specifically
> interested in this for DAX support on btrfs/CoW: The TODO comment on
> top of dax_associate_entry() :)
>
> If there are patches/git tree I could use to base my patches on, it would
> be nice.

Half joking, but I was hoping that by the time I had circled back to
finally reviewing the brtfs dax patches that a solution to this
problem would be waiting. We spent more time on other DAX topics. I
recall that Jerome and I were mutually skeptical of each others
approaches at first glance, but we did not get into the details. So, I
think it will be a matter of getting the idea coded up. I'm finally
coming out from under a pile of mm work so I should have some time
this cycle to push the page proxy idea forward.