[rds-devel] [RESEND PATCH] mm: Use spin_lock_irqsave in __set_page_dirty_nobuffers
Andrew Morton
akpm at linux-foundation.org
Mon Jan 24 17:44:55 PST 2011
On Mon, 24 Jan 2011 17:30:27 -0800 Andy Grover <andy.grover at oracle.com> wrote:
> > Running lock_page() against multiple pages is problematic because it
> > introduces a risk of ab/ba deadlocks against another thread which is
> > also locking multiple pages. Possible solutions are a) take some
> > higher-level mutex so that only one thread will ever be running the
> > lock_page()s at a time or b) lock all the pages in ascending
> > paeg_to_pfn() order. Both of these are a PITA.
>
> Another problem may be that lock/unlock_page() doesn't nest.
Not against the same page, no. It's functionally the same as
mutex_lock/unlock, only lockdep doesn't know about lock_page().
> We need to
> be able to handle multiple ops to the same page. So, sounds like we also
> need to keep track of all pages we lock/dirty and make sure they aren't
> unlocked as long as we have references against them?
It sounds like it. Also need to address the ab/ba issue with multiple
lock_page()s in a single thread.
I don't *think* there's any other site in the kernel which locks
multiple pages like this. Adopting the convention of "lock them in
ascending pfn order" will be OK, I think.
> I just want to fully understand what's needed, before writing at least 2
> PITA's worth of extra code :)
>
> > Some thought is needed regarding anonymous pages and swapcache pages.
>
> I think the common case for us is IO into anon pages.
lock_page() will presumably keep the swapcache manipulations happy.
We'd also need to think about the implications of pte-dirtiness and
maybe rmap walks when dealing with non-cpu-initiated dirtyings. "do
what fs/direct-io.c does" would be a good starting point.
Actually, fs/direct-io.c gets away without locking the pages.
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