namei.c LOOKUP_NONBLOCK (was "Re: [GIT PULL] io_uring fixes for 5.10-rc")

[Jens Axboe]

On 11/21/20 3:58 PM, Jens Axboe wrote:
> On 11/21/20 11:07 AM, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>> On Fri, Nov 20, 2020 at 7:00 PM Jens Axboe <axboe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>> Actually, I think we can do even better. How about just having
>>> do_filp_open() exit after LOOKUP_RCU fails, if LOOKUP_RCU was already
>>> set in the lookup flags? Then we don't need to change much else, and
>>> most of it falls out naturally.
>>
>> So I was thinking doing the RCU lookup unconditionally, and then doing
>> the nn-RCU lookup if that fails afterwards.
>>
>> But your patch looks good to me.
>>
>> Except for the issue you noticed.
> 
> After having taken a closer look, I think the saner approach is
> LOOKUP_NONBLOCK instead of using LOOKUP_RCU which is used more as
> a state than lookup flag. I'll try and hack something up that looks
> passable.
> 
>>> Except it seems that should work, except LOOKUP_RCU does not guarantee
>>> that we're not going to do IO:
>>
>> Well, almost nothing guarantees lack of IO, since allocations etc can
>> still block, but..
> 
> Sure, and we can't always avoid that - but blatant block on waiting
> for IO should be avoided.
> 
>>> [   20.463195]  schedule+0x5f/0xd0
>>> [   20.463444]  io_schedule+0x45/0x70
>>> [   20.463712]  bit_wait_io+0x11/0x50
>>> [   20.463981]  __wait_on_bit+0x2c/0x90
>>> [   20.464264]  out_of_line_wait_on_bit+0x86/0x90
>>> [   20.464611]  ? var_wake_function+0x30/0x30
>>> [   20.464932]  __ext4_find_entry+0x2b5/0x410
>>> [   20.465254]  ? d_alloc_parallel+0x241/0x4e0
>>> [   20.465581]  ext4_lookup+0x51/0x1b0
>>> [   20.465855]  ? __d_lookup+0x77/0x120
>>> [   20.466136]  path_openat+0x4e8/0xe40
>>> [   20.466417]  do_filp_open+0x79/0x100
>>
>> Hmm. Is this perhaps an O_CREAT case? I think we only do the dcache
>> lookups under RCU, not the final path component creation.
> 
> It's just a basic test that opens all files under a directory. So
> no O_CREAT, it's all existing files. I think this is just a case of not
> aborting early enough for LOOKUP_NONBLOCK, and we've obviously already
> dropped LOOKUP_RCU (and done rcu_read_unlock() again) at this point.
> 
>> And there are probably lots of other situations where we finish with
>> LOOKUP_RCU (with unlazy_walk()), and then continue.> 
>> Example: look at "may_lookup()" - if inode_permission() says "I can't
>> do this without blocking" the logic actually just tries to validate
>> the current state (that "unlazy_walk()" thing), and then continue
>> without RCU.
>>
>> It obviously hasn't been about lockless semantics, it's been about
>> really being lockless. So LOOKUP_RCU has been a "try to do this
>> locklessly" rather than "you cannot take any locks".
>>
>> I guess we would have to add a LOOKUP_NOBLOCK thing to actually then
>> say "if the RCU lookup fails, return -EAGAIN".
>>
>> That's probably not a huge undertaking, but yeah, I didn't think of
>> it. I think this is a "we need to have Al tell us if it's reasonable".
> 
> Definitely. I did have a weak attempt at LOOKUP_NONBLOCK earlier, I'll
> try and resurrect it and see what that leads to. Outside of just pure
> lookup, the d_revalidate() was a bit interesting as it may block for
> certain cases, but those should be (hopefully) detectable upfront.

Here's a potentially better attempt - basically we allow LOOKUP_NONBLOCK
with LOOKUP_RCU, and if we end up dropping LOOKUP_RCU, then we generally
return -EAGAIN if LOOKUP_NONBLOCK is set as we can no longer guarantee
that we won't block.

Al, what do you think? I didn't include the io_uring part here, as
that's just dropping the existing hack and setting LOOKUP_NONBLOCK if
we're in task context. I can send it out as a separate patch, of course.

diff --git a/fs/namei.c b/fs/namei.c
index 03d0e11e4f36..303874f1b9f1 100644
--- a/fs/namei.c
+++ b/fs/namei.c
@@ -679,7 +679,7 @@ static bool legitimize_root(struct nameidata *nd)
  * Nothing should touch nameidata between unlazy_walk() failure and
  * terminate_walk().
  */
-static int unlazy_walk(struct nameidata *nd)
+static int __unlazy_walk(struct nameidata *nd)
 {
 	struct dentry *parent = nd->path.dentry;
 
@@ -704,6 +704,18 @@ static int unlazy_walk(struct nameidata *nd)
 	return -ECHILD;
 }
 
+static int unlazy_walk(struct nameidata *nd)
+{
+	int ret;
+
+	ret = __unlazy_walk(nd);
+	/* If caller is asking for NONBLOCK lookup, assume we can't satisfy it */
+	if (!ret && (nd->flags & LOOKUP_NONBLOCK))
+		ret = -EAGAIN;
+
+	return ret;
+}
+
 /**
  * unlazy_child - try to switch to ref-walk mode.
  * @nd: nameidata pathwalk data
@@ -764,10 +776,13 @@ static int unlazy_child(struct nameidata *nd, struct dentry *dentry, unsigned se
 
 static inline int d_revalidate(struct dentry *dentry, unsigned int flags)
 {
-	if (unlikely(dentry->d_flags & DCACHE_OP_REVALIDATE))
+	if (unlikely(dentry->d_flags & DCACHE_OP_REVALIDATE)) {
+		if ((flags & (LOOKUP_RCU | LOOKUP_NONBLOCK)) == LOOKUP_NONBLOCK)
+			return -EAGAIN;
 		return dentry->d_op->d_revalidate(dentry, flags);
-	else
-		return 1;
+	}
+
+	return 1;
 }
 
 /**
@@ -792,7 +807,7 @@ static int complete_walk(struct nameidata *nd)
 		 */
 		if (!(nd->flags & (LOOKUP_ROOT | LOOKUP_IS_SCOPED)))
 			nd->root.mnt = NULL;
-		if (unlikely(unlazy_walk(nd)))
+		if (unlikely(__unlazy_walk(nd)))
 			return -ECHILD;
 	}
 
@@ -1466,8 +1481,9 @@ static struct dentry *lookup_fast(struct nameidata *nd,
 		unsigned seq;
 		dentry = __d_lookup_rcu(parent, &nd->last, &seq);
 		if (unlikely(!dentry)) {
-			if (unlazy_walk(nd))
-				return ERR_PTR(-ECHILD);
+			int ret = unlazy_walk(nd);
+			if (ret)
+				return ERR_PTR(ret);
 			return NULL;
 		}
 
@@ -1569,8 +1585,9 @@ static inline int may_lookup(struct nameidata *nd)
 		int err = inode_permission(nd->inode, MAY_EXEC|MAY_NOT_BLOCK);
 		if (err != -ECHILD)
 			return err;
-		if (unlazy_walk(nd))
-			return -ECHILD;
+		err = unlazy_walk(nd);
+		if (err)
+			return err;
 	}
 	return inode_permission(nd->inode, MAY_EXEC);
 }
@@ -1591,9 +1608,11 @@ static int reserve_stack(struct nameidata *nd, struct path *link, unsigned seq)
 		// we need to grab link before we do unlazy.  And we can't skip
 		// unlazy even if we fail to grab the link - cleanup needs it
 		bool grabbed_link = legitimize_path(nd, link, seq);
+		int ret;
 
-		if (unlazy_walk(nd) != 0 || !grabbed_link)
-			return -ECHILD;
+		ret = unlazy_walk(nd);
+		if (ret && !grabbed_link)
+			return ret;
 
 		if (nd_alloc_stack(nd))
 			return 0;
@@ -1634,8 +1653,9 @@ static const char *pick_link(struct nameidata *nd, struct path *link,
 		touch_atime(&last->link);
 		cond_resched();
 	} else if (atime_needs_update(&last->link, inode)) {
-		if (unlikely(unlazy_walk(nd)))
-			return ERR_PTR(-ECHILD);
+		error = unlazy_walk(nd);
+		if (unlikely(error))
+			return ERR_PTR(error);
 		touch_atime(&last->link);
 	}
 
@@ -1652,8 +1672,9 @@ static const char *pick_link(struct nameidata *nd, struct path *link,
 		if (nd->flags & LOOKUP_RCU) {
 			res = get(NULL, inode, &last->done);
 			if (res == ERR_PTR(-ECHILD)) {
-				if (unlikely(unlazy_walk(nd)))
-					return ERR_PTR(-ECHILD);
+				error = unlazy_walk(nd);
+				if (unlikely(error))
+					return ERR_PTR(error);
 				res = get(link->dentry, inode, &last->done);
 			}
 		} else {
@@ -2193,8 +2214,9 @@ static int link_path_walk(const char *name, struct nameidata *nd)
 		}
 		if (unlikely(!d_can_lookup(nd->path.dentry))) {
 			if (nd->flags & LOOKUP_RCU) {
-				if (unlazy_walk(nd))
-					return -ECHILD;
+				err = unlazy_walk(nd);
+				if (err)
+					return err;
 			}
 			return -ENOTDIR;
 		}
@@ -3394,10 +3416,14 @@ struct file *do_filp_open(int dfd, struct filename *pathname,
 
 	set_nameidata(&nd, dfd, pathname);
 	filp = path_openat(&nd, op, flags | LOOKUP_RCU);
+	/* If we fail RCU lookup, assume NONBLOCK cannot be honored */
+	if (flags & LOOKUP_NONBLOCK)
+		goto out;
 	if (unlikely(filp == ERR_PTR(-ECHILD)))
 		filp = path_openat(&nd, op, flags);
 	if (unlikely(filp == ERR_PTR(-ESTALE)))
 		filp = path_openat(&nd, op, flags | LOOKUP_REVAL);
+out:
 	restore_nameidata();
 	return filp;
 }
diff --git a/include/linux/namei.h b/include/linux/namei.h
index a4bb992623c4..c36c4e0805fc 100644
--- a/include/linux/namei.h
+++ b/include/linux/namei.h
@@ -46,6 +46,7 @@ enum {LAST_NORM, LAST_ROOT, LAST_DOT, LAST_DOTDOT};
 #define LOOKUP_NO_XDEV		0x040000 /* No mountpoint crossing. */
 #define LOOKUP_BENEATH		0x080000 /* No escaping from starting point. */
 #define LOOKUP_IN_ROOT		0x100000 /* Treat dirfd as fs root. */
+#define LOOKUP_NONBLOCK		0x200000 /* don't block for lookup */
 /* LOOKUP_* flags which do scope-related checks based on the dirfd. */
 #define LOOKUP_IS_SCOPED (LOOKUP_BENEATH | LOOKUP_IN_ROOT)
 

-- 
Jens Axboe