Re: [man-pages RFC PATCH v4] statx, inode: document the new STATX_INO_VERSION field

[NeilBrown]

On Tue, 13 Sep 2022, Dave Chinner wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 13, 2022 at 09:29:48AM +1000, NeilBrown wrote:
> > On Mon, 12 Sep 2022, Jeff Layton wrote:
> > > On Sun, 2022-09-11 at 08:53 +1000, NeilBrown wrote:
> > > > This could be expensive.
> > > > 
> > > > There is not currently any locking around O_DIRECT writes.  You cannot
> > > > synchronise with them.
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > AFAICT, DIO write() implementations in btrfs, ext4, and xfs all hold
> > > inode_lock_shared across the I/O. That was why patch #8 takes the
> > > inode_lock (exclusive) across the getattr.
> > 
> > Looking at ext4_dio_write_iter() it certain does take
> > inode_lock_shared() before starting the write and in some cases it
> > requests, using IOMAP_DIO_FORCE_WAIT, that imap_dio_rw() should wait for
> > the write to complete.  But not in all cases.
> > So I don't think it always holds the shared lock across all direct IO.
> 
> To serialise against dio writes, one must:
> 
> 	// Lock the inode exclusively to block new DIO submissions
> 	inode_lock(inode);
> 
> 	// Wait for all in flight DIO reads and writes to complete
> 	inode_dio_wait(inode);
> 
> This is how truncate, fallocate, etc serialise against AIO+DIO which
> do not hold the inode lock across the entire IO. These have to
> serialise aginst DIO reads, too, because we can't have IO in
> progress over a range of the file that we are about to free....
> 
> > > Taking inode_lock_shared is sufficient to block out buffered and DAX
> > > writes. DIO writes sometimes only take the shared lock (e.g. when the
> > > data is already properly aligned). If we want to ensure the getattr
> > > doesn't run while _any_ writes are running, we'd need the exclusive
> > > lock.
> > 
> > But the exclusive lock is bad for scalability.
> 
> Serilisation against DIO is -expensive- and -slow-. It's not a
> solution for what is supposed to be a fast unlocked read-only
> operation like statx().
> 
> > > Maybe that's overkill, though it seems like we could have a race like
> > > this without taking inode_lock across the getattr:
> > > 
> > > reader				writer
> > > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> > > 				i_version++
> > > getattr
> > > read
> > > 				DIO write to backing store
> > > 
> > 
> > This is why I keep saying that the i_version increment must be after the
> > write, not before it.
> 
> Sure, but that ignores the reason why we actually need to bump
> i_version *before* we submit a DIO write. DIO write invalidates the
> page cache over the range of the write, so any racing read will
> re-populate the page cache during the DIO write.

and DIO reads can also get data at some intermediate state of the write.
So what?

i_version cannot provide coherent caching.  You needs locks and
call-backs and such for that.
i_version (as used by NFS) only aims for approximate caching.
Specifically:
 1/ max-age caching.  The i_version is polled when the age of the cache
    reaches some preset value, and the cache is purged/reloaded if
    needed, and the age reset to 0.
 2/ close-to-open caching.  There are well-defined events where the
    i_version must reflect preceding events by that the same client
    (close and unlock) and well defined events when the client will
    check the i_version before trusting any cache (open and lock).

There is absolutely no need ever to update the i_version *before* making
a change.  If you really think there is, please provide a sequence of
events for two different actors/observes where having the update before
the change will provide a useful benefit.

Thanks,
NeilBrown

> 
> Hence buffered reads can return before the DIO write has completed,
> and the contents of the read can contain, none, some or all of the
> contents of the DIO write. Hence i_version has to be incremented
> before the DIO write is submitted so that racing getattrs will
> indicate that the local caches have been invalidated and that data
> needs to be refetched.
> 
> But, yes, to actually be safe here, we *also* should be bumping
> i_version on DIO write on DIO write completion so that racing
> i_version and data reads that occur *after* the initial i_version
> bump are invalidated immediately.
> 
> IOWs, to avoid getattr/read races missing stale data invalidations
> during DIO writes, we really need to bump i_version both _before and
> after_ DIO write submission.
> 
> It's corner cases like this where "i_version should only be bumped
> when ctime changes" fails completely. i.e. there are concurrent IO
> situations which can only really be handled correctly by bumping
> i_version whenever either in-memory and/or on-disk persistent data/
> metadata state changes occur.....
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Dave.
> -- 
> Dave Chinner
> david@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>