On 05/31/2012 10:08 PM, Jeff Moyer wrote:

Junxiao Bi [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Ocfs2 uses kiocb.*private as a flag of unsigned long size. In
commit a11f7e6 ocfs2: serialize unaligned aio, the unaligned
io flag is involved in it to serialize the unaligned aio. As
*private is not initialized in init_sync_kiocb() of do_sync_write(),
this unaligned io flag may be unexpectly set in an aligned dio.
And this will cause OCFS2_I(inode)->ip_unaligned_aio decreased
to -1 in ocfs2_dio_end_io(), thus the following unaligned dio
will hang forever at ocfs2_aiodio_wait() in ocfs2_file_write_iter().
We can't initialized this flag in ocfs2_file_write_iter() since
it may be invoked several times by do_sync_write(). So we initialize
it in init_sync_kiocb(), it's also useful for other similiar use of
it in the future.

I don't see any ocfs2_file_write_iter in the upstream kernel.
ocfs2_file_aio_write most certainly could set ->private to 0, it
will only be called once for a given kiocb.
From sys_io_submit->..->io_submit_one->aio_run_iocb->aio_rw_vect_retry, 

it seems that aio_write could be called two times. See the following
scenario.
1. There is a file opened with direct io flag, in aio_rw_vect_retry,
aio_write is called first time. If the direct io can
not be completed, it will fall back into buffer io, see line 2329 in
aio_write.
2. If the very buffer io is a partial write, then it will return back
to  aio_rw_vect_retry and issue the second aio_write.

That point aside, I have no issues with setting private to NULL in
init_sync_kiocb.  If you fix up the comment to reflect reality
w.r.t. the upstream kernel source, I'll ack the patch.

OK, I will fix the comment.

Cheers,
Jeff