[PATCH 1/7] xfs: always use DAX if mount option is used

From: Ross Zwisler
Date: Mon Sep 25 2017 - 19:15:28 EST


Before support for the per-inode DAX flag was disabled the XFS the code had
an issue where the user couldn't reliably tell whether or not DAX was being
used to service page faults and I/O when the DAX mount option was used. In
this case each inode within the mounted filesystem started with S_DAX set
due to the mount option, but it could be cleared if someone touched the
individual inode flag.

For example (v4.13 and before):

# mount | grep dax
/dev/pmem0 on /mnt type xfs
(rw,relatime,seclabel,attr2,dax,inode64,sunit=4096,swidth=4096,noquota)

# touch /mnt/a /mnt/b # both files currently use DAX

# xfs_io -c "lsattr" /mnt/* # neither has the DAX inode option set
----------e----- /mnt/a
----------e----- /mnt/b

# xfs_io -c "chattr -x" /mnt/a # this clears S_DAX for /mnt/a

# xfs_io -c "lsattr" /mnt/*
----------e----- /mnt/a
----------e----- /mnt/b

We end up with both /mnt/a and /mnt/b looking identical from the point of
view of the mount option and from lsattr, but one is using DAX and the
other is not.

Fix this by always doing DAX I/O when either the mount option is set or
when the DAX inode flag is set. This means that DAX will always be used
for all inodes on a filesystem mounted with -o dax, making the usage
reliable and detectable.

Signed-off-by: Ross Zwisler <ross.zwisler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxx>
---
fs/xfs/xfs_ioctl.c | 11 +++++++++--
1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/fs/xfs/xfs_ioctl.c b/fs/xfs/xfs_ioctl.c
index 5049e8a..26faeb9 100644
--- a/fs/xfs/xfs_ioctl.c
+++ b/fs/xfs/xfs_ioctl.c
@@ -1013,7 +1013,7 @@ xfs_diflags_to_linux(
else
inode->i_flags &= ~S_NOATIME;
#if 0 /* disabled until the flag switching races are sorted out */
- if (xflags & FS_XFLAG_DAX)
+ if ((xflags & FS_XFLAG_DAX) || (ip->i_mount->m_flags & XFS_MOUNT_DAX))
inode->i_flags |= S_DAX;
else
inode->i_flags &= ~S_DAX;
@@ -1104,7 +1104,14 @@ xfs_ioctl_setattr_dax_invalidate(
return -EINVAL;
}

- /* If the DAX state is not changing, we have nothing to do here. */
+ /*
+ * If the DAX state is not changing, we have nothing to do here. If
+ * the DAX mount option was used we will update the DAX inode flag as
+ * the user requested but we will continue to use DAX for I/O and page
+ * faults regardless of how the inode flag is set.
+ */
+ if (ip->i_mount->m_flags & XFS_MOUNT_DAX)
+ return 0;
if ((fa->fsx_xflags & FS_XFLAG_DAX) && IS_DAX(inode))
return 0;
if (!(fa->fsx_xflags & FS_XFLAG_DAX) && !IS_DAX(inode))
--
2.9.5