Re: [External] Re: [PATCH] fuse: force sync attr when inode is invalidated

[Jiachen Zhang]

On Fri, Jun 24, 2022 at 3:26 AM Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jun 21, 2022 at 08:56:51PM +0800, wubo wrote:
> > From: Wu Bo <bo.wu@xxxxxxxx>
> >
> > Now the fuse driver only trust it's local inode size when
> > writeback_cache is enabled. Even the userspace server tell the driver
> > the inode cache is invalidated, the size attrabute will not update. And
> > will keep it's out-of-date size till the inode cache is dropped. This is
> > not reasonable.
>
> BTW, can you give more details about what's the use case. With
> writeback_cache, writes can be cached in fuse and not sent to
> file server immediately. And I think that's why fuse trusts
> local i_size.
>
> With writeback_cache enabled, I don't think file should be modified
> externally (outside the fuse client).
>
> So what's that use case where file size cached in fuse is out of
> date. You probably should not use writeback_cache if you are
> modifying files outside the fuse client.
>
> Having said that I am not sure why FUSE_NOTIFY_INVAL_INODE was added to
> begin with. If files are not supposed to be modifed outside the fuse
> client, why are we dropping acls and invalidating attrs. If intent is
> just to drop page cache, then it should have been just that nothing
> else.
>
> So up to some extent, FUSE_NOTIFY_INVAL_INODE is somewhat confusing. Would
> have been good if there was some documentation for it.
>
> Thanks
> Vivek
>

Hi Wu and Vivek,

Recently, we have had some discussions about the writeback_cache
revalidation on the mailing list [1][2]. Miklos gave his initial
patchset about writeback_cache v2, which supports c/mtime and size
updates [1]. However, those methods do not make use of reverse
messages, as virtio-fs does not support reverse notification yet. I'm
going to send out a new version of that patch based on the discussion
and with more considerations.

I also agree that, semantically, FUSE_NOTIFY_INVAL_INODE should
invalidate i_size as well. So I think this patch is a good supplement
for FUSE_NOTIFY_INVAL_INODE. But we need to be more careful as the
size can be updated from server to kernel, and from kernel to server.
I will leave some comments about such issues in the following code.

For the use case, writeback_cache is superb over write-through mode in
write-intensive scenarios, but its consistency among multiple clients
is too bad (almost no consistency). I think it's good to give a little
more consistency to writeback_cache.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-fsdevel/20220325132126.61949-1-zhangjiachen.jaycee@xxxxxxxxxxxxx/
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-fsdevel/20220608104202.19461-1-zhangjiachen.jaycee@xxxxxxxxxxxxx/

> >
> > Signed-off-by: Wu Bo <bo.wu@xxxxxxxx>
> > ---
> >  fs/fuse/inode.c | 10 +++++++++-
> >  1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/fs/fuse/inode.c b/fs/fuse/inode.c
> > index 8c0665c5dff8..a4e62c7f2b83 100644
> > --- a/fs/fuse/inode.c
> > +++ b/fs/fuse/inode.c
> > @@ -162,6 +162,11 @@ static ino_t fuse_squash_ino(u64 ino64)
> >       return ino;
> >  }
> >
> > +static bool fuse_force_sync(struct fuse_inode *fi)
> > +{
> > +     return fi->i_time == 0;
> > +}
> > +
> >  void fuse_change_attributes_common(struct inode *inode, struct fuse_attr *attr,
> >                                  u64 attr_valid, u32 cache_mask)
> >  {
> > @@ -222,8 +227,10 @@ void fuse_change_attributes_common(struct inode *inode, struct fuse_attr *attr,
> >  u32 fuse_get_cache_mask(struct inode *inode)
> >  {
> >       struct fuse_conn *fc = get_fuse_conn(inode);
> > +     struct fuse_inode *fi = get_fuse_inode(inode);
> > +     bool is_force_sync = fuse_force_sync(fi);
> >
> > -     if (!fc->writeback_cache || !S_ISREG(inode->i_mode))
> > +     if (!fc->writeback_cache || !S_ISREG(inode->i_mode) || is_force_sync)
> >               return 0;
> >
> >       return STATX_MTIME | STATX_CTIME | STATX_SIZE;
> > @@ -437,6 +444,7 @@ int fuse_reverse_inval_inode(struct fuse_conn *fc, u64 nodeid,
> >       fi = get_fuse_inode(inode);
> >       spin_lock(&fi->lock);
> >       fi->attr_version = atomic64_inc_return(&fc->attr_version);
> > +     fi->i_time = 0;
> >       spin_unlock(&fi->lock);

Seems fuse_reverse_inval_inode() only drops page cache from offset to
offset+len, should we only invalidate i_time on a full cache drop?
Otherwise, as the server size is stale, the users may see a file is
truncated.

Also, what if a FUSE_GETATTR request gets the attr_version after
fuse_reverse_inval_inode() increases it, but tries to update i_size
after the invalidate_inode_pages2_range() in
fuse_reverse_inval_inode()? In this case, server_size can be updated
by invalidate_inode_pages2_range(), and FUSE_GETATTR might gets a
stale server_size. Meanwhile, as FUSE_GETATTR has got the newest
attr_version, the kernel_size will still be updated. This can cause
false truncation even for a single FUSE client. So we may need to do
more about the attr_version in writeback mode.

Thanks,
Jiachen

> >
> >       fuse_invalidate_attr(inode);
> > --
> > 2.35.1
> >
>