Re: [Ocfs2-devel] [PATCH v8 00/17] gfs2: Fix mmap + page fault deadlocks

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
To: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
Cc: kvm-ppc@vger.kernel.org, Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>,
	cluster-devel <cluster-devel@redhat.com>, Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>,
	Andreas Gruenbacher <agruenba@redhat.com>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Paul Mackerras <paulus@ozlabs.org>,
	Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
	linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-btrfs <linux-btrfs@vger.kernel.org>,
	ocfs2-devel@oss.oracle.com
Subject: Re: [Ocfs2-devel] [PATCH v8 00/17] gfs2: Fix mmap + page fault deadlocks
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2021 20:19:40 -1000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAHk-=wgP058PNY8eoWW=5uRMox-PuesDMrLsrCWPS+xXhzbQxQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <YXCbv5gdfEEtAYo8@arm.com>

On Wed, Oct 20, 2021 at 12:44 PM Catalin Marinas
<catalin.marinas@arm.com> wrote:
>
> However, with MTE doing both get_user() every 16 bytes and
> gup can get pretty expensive.

So I really think that anything that is performance-critical had
better only do the "fault_in_write()" code path in the cold error path
where you took a page fault.

IOW, the loop structure should be

     repeat:
                take_locks();
                pagefault_disable();
                ret = do_things_with_locks();
                pagefault_enable();
                release_locks();

                // Failure path?
                if (unlikely(ret == -EFAULT)) {
                        if (fault_in_writable(..))
                                goto repeat;
                        return -EFAULT;
                }

rather than have it be some kind of "first do fault_in_writable(),
then do the work" model.

So I wouldn't worry too much about the performance concerns. It simply
shouldn't be a common or hot path.

And yes, I've seen code that does that "fault_in_xyz()" before the
critical operation that cannot take page faults, and does it
unconditionally.

But then it isn't the "fault_in_xyz()" that should be blamed if it is
slow, but the caller that does things the wrong way around.

            Linus

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