[PATCH 00/12] Swap-over-NFS without deadlocking V5

From: Mel Gorman
Date: Thu May 17 2012 - 10:51:28 EST


Changelog since V4
o Catch if SOCK_MEMALLOC flag is cleared with rmem tokens (davem)

Changelog since V3
o Rebase to 3.4-rc5
o kmap pages for writing to swap (akpm)
o Move forward declaration to reduce chance of duplication (akpm)

Changelog since V2
o Nothing significant, just rebases. A radix tree lookup is replaced with
a linear search would be the biggest rebase artifact

This patch series is based on top of "Swap-over-NBD without deadlocking v11"
as it depends on the same reservation of PF_MEMALLOC reserves logic.

When a user or administrator requires swap for their application, they
create a swap partition and file, format it with mkswap and activate it with
swapon. In diskless systems this is not an option so if swap if required
then swapping over the network is considered. The two likely scenarios
are when blade servers are used as part of a cluster where the form factor
or maintenance costs do not allow the use of disks and thin clients.

The Linux Terminal Server Project recommends the use of the Network
Block Device (NBD) for swap but this is not always an option. There is
no guarantee that the network attached storage (NAS) device is running
Linux or supports NBD. However, it is likely that it supports NFS so there
are users that want support for swapping over NFS despite any performance
concern. Some distributions currently carry patches that support swapping
over NFS but it would be preferable to support it in the mainline kernel.

Patch 1 avoids a stream-specific deadlock that potentially affects TCP.

Patch 2 is a small modification to SELinux to avoid using PFMEMALLOC
reserves.

Patch 3 adds three helpers for filesystems to handle swap cache pages.
For example, page_file_mapping() returns page->mapping for
file-backed pages and the address_space of the underlying
swap file for swap cache pages.

Patch 4 adds two address_space_operations to allow a filesystem
to pin all metadata relevant to a swapfile in memory. Upon
successful activation, the swapfile is marked SWP_FILE and
the address space operation ->direct_IO is used for writing
and ->readpage for reading in swap pages.

Patch 5 notes that patch 3 is bolting
filesystem-specific-swapfile-support onto the side and that
the default handlers have different information to what
is available to the filesystem. This patch refactors the
code so that there are generic handlers for each of the new
address_space operations.

Patch 6 adds an API to allow a vector of kernel addresses to be
translated to struct pages and pinned for IO.

Patch 7 adds support for using highmem pages for swap by kmapping
the pages before calling the direct_IO handler.

Patch 8 updates NFS to use the helpers from patch 3 where necessary.

Patch 9 avoids setting PF_private on PG_swapcache pages within NFS.

Patch 10 implements the new swapfile-related address_space operations
for NFS and teaches the direct IO handler how to manage
kernel addresses.

Patch 11 prevents page allocator recursions in NFS by using GFP_NOIO
where appropriate.

Patch 12 fixes a NULL pointer dereference that occurs when using
swap-over-NFS.

With the patches applied, it is possible to mount a swapfile that is on an
NFS filesystem. Swap performance is not great with a swap stress test taking
roughly twice as long to complete than if the swap device was backed by NBD.

Documentation/filesystems/Locking | 13 ++++
Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt | 12 +++
fs/nfs/Kconfig | 8 ++
fs/nfs/direct.c | 94 ++++++++++++++++--------
fs/nfs/file.c | 28 +++++--
fs/nfs/inode.c | 6 ++
fs/nfs/internal.h | 7 +-
fs/nfs/pagelist.c | 6 +-
fs/nfs/read.c | 6 +-
fs/nfs/write.c | 96 +++++++++++++++---------
include/linux/blk_types.h | 2 +
include/linux/fs.h | 8 ++
include/linux/highmem.h | 7 ++
include/linux/mm.h | 29 ++++++++
include/linux/nfs_fs.h | 4 +-
include/linux/pagemap.h | 5 ++
include/linux/sunrpc/xprt.h | 3 +
include/linux/swap.h | 8 ++
include/net/sock.h | 7 +-
mm/highmem.c | 12 +++
mm/memory.c | 52 +++++++++++++
mm/page_io.c | 145 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
mm/swap_state.c | 2 +-
mm/swapfile.c | 141 ++++++++++++++----------------------
net/caif/caif_socket.c | 2 +-
net/core/sock.c | 14 +++-
net/ipv4/tcp_input.c | 12 +--
net/sctp/ulpevent.c | 2 +-
net/sunrpc/Kconfig | 5 ++
net/sunrpc/clnt.c | 2 +
net/sunrpc/sched.c | 7 +-
net/sunrpc/xprtsock.c | 53 ++++++++++++++
security/selinux/avc.c | 2 +-
33 files changed, 613 insertions(+), 187 deletions(-)

--
1.7.9.2

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