Re: [RFC PATCH 1/3][RESEND] fs: add infrastructure for opportunistic high-res ctime/mtime updates

[Christian Brauner]

On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 10:37:00AM -0400, Jeff Layton wrote:
> The VFS always uses coarse-grained timestamp updates for filling out the
> ctime and mtime after a change. This has the benefit of allowing
> filesystems to optimize away metadata updates.
> 
> Unfortunately, this has always been an issue when we're exporting via
> NFSv3, which relies on timestamps to validate caches. Even with NFSv4, a
> lot of exported filesystems don't properly support a change attribute
> and are subject to the same problem of timestamp granularity. Other
> applications have similar issues (e.g backup applications).
> 
> Switching to always using high resolution timestamps would improve the
> situation for NFS, but that becomes rather expensive, as we'd have to
> log a lot more metadata updates.
> 
> This patch grabs a new i_state bit to use as a flag that filesystems can
> set in their getattr routine to indicate that the mtime or ctime was
> queried since it was last updated.
> 
> It then adds a new current_cmtime function that acts like the
> current_time helper, but will conditionally grab high-res timestamps
> when the i_state flag is set in the inode.
> 
> This allows NFS and other applications to reap the benefits of high-res
> ctime and mtime timestamps, but at a substantially lower cost than
> fetching them every time.
> 
> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Jeff Layton <jlayton@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>  fs/inode.c         | 40 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
>  fs/stat.c          | 10 ++++++++++
>  include/linux/fs.h |  5 ++++-
>  3 files changed, 52 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/fs/inode.c b/fs/inode.c
> index 4558dc2f1355..3630f67fd042 100644
> --- a/fs/inode.c
> +++ b/fs/inode.c
> @@ -2062,6 +2062,42 @@ static int __file_update_time(struct file *file, struct timespec64 *now,
>  	return ret;
>  }
>  
> +/**
> + * current_cmtime - Return FS time (possibly high-res)
> + * @inode: inode.
> + *
> + * Return the current time truncated to the time granularity supported by
> + * the fs, as suitable for a ctime or mtime change. If something recently
> + * fetched the ctime or mtime out of the inode via getattr, then get a
> + * high-resolution timestamp.
> + *
> + * Note that inode and inode->sb cannot be NULL.
> + * Otherwise, the function warns and returns coarse time without truncation.
> + */
> +struct timespec64 current_cmtime(struct inode *inode)
> +{
> +	struct timespec64 now;
> +
> +	if (unlikely(!inode->i_sb)) {
> +		WARN(1, "%s() called with uninitialized super_block in the inode", __func__);

How would this happen? Seems weird to even bother checking this.

> +		ktime_get_coarse_real_ts64(&now);
> +		return now;
> +	}
> +
> +	/* Do a lockless check for the flag before taking the spinlock */
> +	if (READ_ONCE(inode->i_state) & I_CMTIME_QUERIED) {
> +		ktime_get_real_ts64(&now);
> +		spin_lock(&inode->i_lock);
> +		inode->i_state &= ~I_CMTIME_QUERIED;
> +		spin_unlock(&inode->i_lock);
> +	} else {
> +		ktime_get_coarse_real_ts64(&now);
> +	}
> +
> +	return timestamp_truncate(now, inode);
> +}
> +EXPORT_SYMBOL(current_cmtime);
> +
>  /**
>   * file_update_time - update mtime and ctime time
>   * @file: file accessed
> @@ -2080,7 +2116,7 @@ int file_update_time(struct file *file)
>  {
>  	int ret;
>  	struct inode *inode = file_inode(file);
> -	struct timespec64 now = current_time(inode);
> +	struct timespec64 now = current_cmtime(inode);
>  
>  	ret = inode_needs_update_time(inode, &now);
>  	if (ret <= 0)
> @@ -2109,7 +2145,7 @@ static int file_modified_flags(struct file *file, int flags)
>  {
>  	int ret;
>  	struct inode *inode = file_inode(file);
> -	struct timespec64 now = current_time(inode);
> +	struct timespec64 now = current_cmtime(inode);
>  
>  	/*
>  	 * Clear the security bits if the process is not being run by root.
> diff --git a/fs/stat.c b/fs/stat.c
> index 7c238da22ef0..d8b80a2e36b7 100644
> --- a/fs/stat.c
> +++ b/fs/stat.c
> @@ -64,6 +64,16 @@ void generic_fillattr(struct mnt_idmap *idmap, struct inode *inode,
>  }
>  EXPORT_SYMBOL(generic_fillattr);
>  
> +void fill_cmtime_and_mark(struct inode *inode, struct kstat *stat)
> +{
> +	spin_lock(&inode->i_lock);
> +	inode->i_state |= I_CMTIME_QUERIED;
> +	stat->ctime = inode->i_ctime;
> +	stat->mtime = inode->i_mtime;
> +	spin_unlock(&inode->i_lock);
> +}
> +EXPORT_SYMBOL(fill_cmtime_and_mark);

So that means that each stat call would mark an inode for a
high-resolution update. There's some performance concerns here. Calling
stat() is super common and it would potentially make the next iop more
expensive. Recursively changing ownership in the container use-case come
to mind which are already expensive.