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Revert "[PATCH] generic_file_buffered_write(): deadlock on vectored w…
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…rite"

This reverts commit 6527c2b, which
fixed the following bug:

  When prefaulting in the pages in generic_file_buffered_write(), we only
  faulted in the pages for the firts segment of the iovec.  If the second of
  successive segment described a mmapping of the page into which we're
  write()ing, and that page is not up-to-date, the fault handler tries to lock
  the already-locked page (to bring it up to date) and deadlocks.

  An exploit for this bug is in writev-deadlock-demo.c, in
  http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/stuff/ext3-tools.tar.gz.

  (These demos assume blocksize < PAGE_CACHE_SIZE).

The problem with this fix is that it takes the kernel back to doing a single
prepare_write()/commit_write() per iovec segment.  So in the worst case we'll
run prepare_write+commit_write 1024 times where we previously would have run
it once. The other problem with the fix is that it fix all the locking problems.

<insert numbers obtained via ext3-tools's writev-speed.c here>

And apparently this change killed NFS overwrite performance, because, I
suppose, it talks to the server for each prepare_write+commit_write.

So just back that patch out - we'll be fixing the deadlock by other means.

Nick says: also it only ever actually papered over the bug, because after
faulting in the pages, they might be unmapped or reclaimed.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
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Andrew Morton authored and Linus Torvalds committed Oct 16, 2007
1 parent 4b49643 commit 6814d7a
Showing 1 changed file with 7 additions and 11 deletions.
18 changes: 7 additions & 11 deletions mm/filemap.c
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -1865,29 +1865,25 @@ generic_file_buffered_write(struct kiocb *iocb, const struct iovec *iov,
do {
unsigned long index;
unsigned long offset;
unsigned long maxlen;
size_t copied;

offset = (pos & (PAGE_CACHE_SIZE -1)); /* Within page */
index = pos >> PAGE_CACHE_SHIFT;
bytes = PAGE_CACHE_SIZE - offset;

/* Limit the size of the copy to the caller's write size */
bytes = min(bytes, count);

/*
* Limit the size of the copy to that of the current segment,
* because fault_in_pages_readable() doesn't know how to walk
* segments.
*/
bytes = min(bytes, cur_iov->iov_len - iov_base);
if (bytes > count)
bytes = count;

/*
* Bring in the user page that we will copy from _first_.
* Otherwise there's a nasty deadlock on copying from the
* same page as we're writing to, without it being marked
* up-to-date.
*/
fault_in_pages_readable(buf, bytes);
maxlen = cur_iov->iov_len - iov_base;
if (maxlen > bytes)
maxlen = bytes;
fault_in_pages_readable(buf, maxlen);

page = __grab_cache_page(mapping,index,&cached_page,&lru_pvec);
if (!page) {
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