Thread (71 messages) 71 messages, 12 authors, 2021-03-13

Re: Question about the "EXPERIMENTAL" tag for dax in XFS

From: Dan Williams <hidden>
Date: 2021-02-26 21:01:11
Also in: linux-btrfs, linux-xfs, lkml, nvdimm, ocfs2-devel

On Fri, Feb 26, 2021 at 12:51 PM Dave Chinner [off-list ref] wrote:
On Fri, Feb 26, 2021 at 11:24:53AM -0800, Dan Williams wrote:
quoted
On Fri, Feb 26, 2021 at 11:05 AM Darrick J. Wong [off-list ref] wrote:
quoted
On Fri, Feb 26, 2021 at 09:45:45AM +0000, ruansy.fnst@fujitsu.com wrote:
quoted
Hi, guys

Beside this patchset, I'd like to confirm something about the
"EXPERIMENTAL" tag for dax in XFS.

In XFS, the "EXPERIMENTAL" tag, which is reported in waring message
when we mount a pmem device with dax option, has been existed for a
while.  It's a bit annoying when using fsdax feature.  So, my initial
intention was to remove this tag.  And I started to find out and solve
the problems which prevent it from being removed.

As is talked before, there are 3 main problems.  The first one is "dax
semantics", which has been resolved.  The rest two are "RMAP for
fsdax" and "support dax reflink for filesystem", which I have been
working on.
<nod>
quoted
So, what I want to confirm is: does it means that we can remove the
"EXPERIMENTAL" tag when the rest two problem are solved?
Yes.  I'd keep the experimental tag for a cycle or two to make sure that
nothing new pops up, but otherwise the two patchsets you've sent close
those two big remaining gaps.  Thank you for working on this!
quoted
Or maybe there are other important problems need to be fixed before
removing it?  If there are, could you please show me that?
That remains to be seen through QA/validation, but I think that's it.

Granted, I still have to read through the two patchsets...
I've been meaning to circle back here as well.

My immediate concern is the issue Jason recently highlighted [1] with
respect to invalidating all dax mappings when / if the device is
ripped out from underneath the fs. I don't think that will collide
with Ruan's implementation, but it does need new communication from
driver to fs about removal events.

[1]: http://lore.kernel.org/r/CAPcyv4i+PZhYZiePf2PaH0dT5jDfkmkDX-3usQy1fAhf6LPyfw@mail.gmail.com (local)
Oh, yay.

The XFS shutdown code is centred around preventing new IO from being
issued - we don't actually do anything about DAX mappings because,
well, I don't think anyone on the filesystem side thought they had
to do anything special if pmem went away from under it.

My understanding -was- that the pmem removal invalidates
all the ptes currently mapped into CPU page tables that point at
the dax device across the system. THe vmas that manage these
mappings are not really something the filesystem really manages,
but a function of the mm subsystem. What the filesystem cares about
is that it gets page faults triggered when a change of state occurs
so that it can remap the page to it's backing store correctly.

IOWs, all the mm subsystem needs to when pmem goes away is clear the
CPU ptes, because then when then when userspace tries to access the
mapped DAX pages we get a new page fault. In processing the fault, the
filesystem will try to get direct access to the pmem from the block
device. This will get an ENODEV error from the block device because
because the backing store (pmem) has been unplugged and is no longer
there...

AFAICT, as long as pmem removal invalidates all the active ptes that
point at the pmem being removed, the filesystem doesn't need to
care about device removal at all, DAX or no DAX...
How would the pmem removal do that without walking all the active
inodes in the fs at the time of shutdown and call
unmap_mapping_range(inode->i_mapping, 0, 0, 1)?

The core-mm does tear down the ptes in the direct map, but user
mappings to pmem are not afaics in xfs_do_force_shutdown().
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