RE: [Patch v2 02/15] CIFS: Add support for direct pages in rdata

From: Long Li
Date: Tue Jun 26 2018 - 23:22:04 EST


> Subject: Re: [Patch v2 02/15] CIFS: Add support for direct pages in rdata
>
> On 6/25/2018 5:01 PM, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> > On Sat, Jun 23, 2018 at 09:50:20PM -0400, Tom Talpey wrote:
> >> On 5/30/2018 3:47 PM, Long Li wrote:
> >>> From: Long Li <longli@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >>>
> >>> Add a function to allocate rdata without allocating pages for data
> >>> transfer. This gives the caller an option to pass a number of pages
> >>> that point to the data buffer.
> >>>
> >>> rdata is still reponsible for free those pages after it's done.
> >>
> >> "Caller" is still responsible? Or is the rdata somehow freeing itself
> >> via another mechanism?
> >>
> >>>
> >>> Signed-off-by: Long Li <longli@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >>> fs/cifs/cifsglob.h | 2 +-
> >>> fs/cifs/file.c | 23 ++++++++++++++++++++---
> >>> 2 files changed, 21 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
> >>>
> >>> diff --git a/fs/cifs/cifsglob.h b/fs/cifs/cifsglob.h index
> >>> 8d16c3e..56864a87 100644
> >>> +++ b/fs/cifs/cifsglob.h
> >>> @@ -1179,7 +1179,7 @@ struct cifs_readdata {
> >>> unsigned int tailsz;
> >>> unsigned int credits;
> >>> unsigned int nr_pages;
> >>> - struct page *pages[];
> >>> + struct page **pages;
> >>
> >> Technically speaking, these are syntactically equivalent. It may not
> >> be worth changing this historic definition.
> >
> > [] is a C99 'flex array', it has a different allocation behavior than
> > ** and is not interchangeable..
>
> In that case, it's an even better reason to not change the declaration.

No, it needs to be declared separately.

With Direct I/O, **pages are allocated and returned from iov_iter_get_pages_alloc() when locking those user pages. They can't be allocated as part of struct cifs_readdata.