Re: [PATCH 2/8] swap: lock i_mutex for swap_writepage direct_IO

[Christoph Hellwig]

On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 05:27:05PM +0100, Jan Kara wrote:
> On Sun 14-12-14 21:26:56, Omar Sandoval wrote:
> > The generic write code locks i_mutex for a direct_IO. Swap-over-NFS
> > doesn't grab the mutex because nfs_direct_IO doesn't expect i_mutex to
> > be held, but most direct_IO implementations do.
>   I think you are speaking about direct IO writes only, aren't you? For DIO
> reads we don't hold i_mutex AFAICS. And also for DIO writes we don't
> necessarily hold i_mutex - see for example XFS which doesn't take i_mutex
> for direct IO writes. It uses it's internal rwlock for this (see
> xfs_file_dio_aio_write()). So I think this is just wrong.

The problem is that the use of ->direct_IO by the swap code is a gross
layering violation.  ->direct_IO is a callback for the filesystem, and
the swap code need to call ->read_iter instead of ->readpage and
->write_tier instead of ->direct_IO, and leave the locking to the
filesystem.
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/