Re: [PATCH v2] mm: introduce validity check on vm dirtiness settings

From: Yafang Shao
Date: Wed Sep 20 2017 - 21:42:39 EST


2017-09-20 23:33 GMT+08:00 Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx>:
> On Tue 19-09-17 19:48:00, Yafang Shao wrote:
>> 2017-09-19 16:35 GMT+08:00 Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx>:
>> > On Tue 19-09-17 06:53:00, Yafang Shao wrote:
>> >> + if (vm_dirty_bytes == 0 && vm_dirty_ratio == 0 &&
>> >> + (dirty_background_bytes != 0 || dirty_background_ratio != 0))
>> >> + ret = false;
>> >
>> > Hum, why not just:
>> > if ((vm_dirty_bytes == 0 && vm_dirty_ratio == 0) ||
>> > (dirty_background_bytes == 0 && dirty_background_ratio == 0))
>> > ret = false;
>> >
>> > IMHO setting either tunable to 0 is just wrong and actively dangerous...
>> >
>>
>> Because these four variables all could be set to 0 before, and I'm not
>> sure if this
>> is needed under some certain conditions, although I think this is
>> dangerous but I have
>> to keep it as before.
>>
>> If you think that is wrong, then I will modified it as you suggested.
>
> OK, I see but see below.
>
>> >> int dirty_background_ratio_handler(struct ctl_table *table, int write,
>> >> void __user *buffer, size_t *lenp,
>> >> loff_t *ppos)
>> >> {
>> >> int ret;
>> >> + int old_ratio = dirty_background_ratio;
>> >>
>> >> ret = proc_dointvec_minmax(table, write, buffer, lenp, ppos);
>> >> - if (ret == 0 && write)
>> >> - dirty_background_bytes = 0;
>> >> + if (ret == 0 && write) {
>> >> + if (dirty_background_ratio != old_ratio &&
>> >> + !vm_dirty_settings_valid()) {
>> >
>> > Why do you check whether new ratio is different here? If it is really
>> > needed, it would deserve a comment.
>> >
>>
>> There're two reseaons,
>> 1. if you set a value same with the old value, it's needn't to do this check.
>> 2. there's another behavior that I'm not sure whether it is reaonable. i.e.
>> if the old value is,
>> vm.dirty_background_bytes = 0;
>> vm.dirty_background_ratio=10;
>> then I execute the bellow command,
>> sysctl -w vm.dirty_background_bytes=0
>> at the end these two values will be,
>> vm.dirty_background_bytes = 0;
>> vm.dirty_background_ratio=0;
>> I'm not sure if this is needed under some certain conditons, So I have
>> to keep it as before.
>
> OK, this is somewhat the problem of the switching logic between _bytes and
> _ratio bytes and also the fact that '0' has a special meaning in these
> files. I think the cleanest would be to just refuse writing of '0' into any
> of these files which would deal with the problem as well.
Got it.
I will submit a new patch then.

>
> Honza
> --
> Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxxx>
> SUSE Labs, CR