Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 28 Jun 2006 16:41:04 +0200 | From | Herbert Poetzl <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 20/20] honor r/w changes at do_remount() time |
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On Wed, Jun 28, 2006 at 06:19:35AM +0100, Al Viro wrote: > On Tue, Jun 27, 2006 at 03:14:57PM -0700, Dave Hansen wrote: > > > > Originally from: Herbert Poetzl <herbert@13thfloor.at> > > > > This is the core of the read-only bind mount patch set. > > > > Note that this does _not_ add a "ro" option directly to > > the bind mount operation. If you require such a mount, > > you must first do the bind, then follow it up with a > > 'mount -o remount,ro' operation. > > I guess the fundamental problem I have with that approach is that it's > a cop-out - we just declare rw state of vfsmount independent from that > of filesystem and add a "if a flag is set, act upon vfsmount".
IMHO the read only check has to be done twice, i.e once for the superblock and a second time for the particular vfs mount, similar, the procfs mounts entry shows the combination (logical and) of the write ability ...
> And yes, some of that does make sense. Fine, let's separate that > stuff; but then we'd better decide what rw superblock *is*.
> We have a number of vfsmounts over given superblock. OK, some are "we > don't even ask them to be r/w". Some are "we want them r/w, but don't > actually use as such at the moment". Some are "pinned down for write > now". And we do get logics for "can't make it r/o right now". > > But look - we have the _same_ logics for superblock itself. Only it's > full of holes. And since you have rw states for those completely > unrelated to those of vfsmount, we get a ridiculous situation - we > *do* mark the moments when superblock becomes impossible to remount > r/o and we even mostly get the moments when it ceases to be busy > writing (unlinked-but-opened files are major exception). But we can't > use that information. > > So "can we remount superblock ro?" turns into kinda-sorta duplicate of > the same for vfsmounts, but it's racy as hell and bloody incomplete; > we don't even get "if some vfsmount over it is busy writing, we won't > remount r/o". Approximation is done, but that's it. E.g. mkdir() in > progress does *not* stop remount of superblock r/o (it does prevent > remount of vfsmount with your patchset). > > FWIW, I suspect that the root of the problem is that we confuse > different states of filesystem. E.g. one obviously useful feature > would be to have soft r/o - filesystem that is (from the driver POV) > mounted readonly, but would get transparently switched r/w at the > first request. And you have all vfsmount-side infrastructure for that, > BTW. Add something like mechanism we use for expiry and you've got > a very tasty feature for e.g. laptop users: e.g. userland asking to > switch fs soft-ro every 15 minutes and if nobody had wanted it r/w > since the last time, do the transition; if asked r/w again, r/w it > goes on its own. IOW, there's more to it than one bit. And I'm talking > about superblock state...
in what way would that help laptop users?
the only case I see (where it could help) is if the laptop runs out of battery and the filesystems are in clean state, they will not ahve to do a filesystem check when they replaced the battery, what am I obviously missing here?
TIA, Herbert
> BTW, it might be worth doing the following: > * reintroduce the list of vfsmounts over given superblock > (protected by vfsmount_lock) > * keep ro flag separate from counter and split it in two. > * all decrements are with atomic_dec_and_lock() > * all increments are with atomic_add_unless() + spin_lock() + > check flags + atomic_add_return() + possible spin_unlock > * if writers count goes from non-zero to zero or vice versa > increment/decrement superblock counter (number of > vfsmounts that really want write access). > * make the moments when i_nlink hits 0 bump the superblock > writers count; drop it when such sucker gets freed on final iput. > * kill the sodding "traverse the list of opened files" > logics in remounting superblock r/o. Instead of that, > grab spinlock, check writers count, bail out if non-zero, > grab vfsmount_lock, traverse the list over superblock and > set one of the flags, drop the locks and proceed. > * when remounting superblock r/w, traverse the list and > knock out the same flag. > > At least that way we'd get the majority of "can remount ro" logics right... > > Another fun issues: > a) MS_REC handling with MS_BIND remounts (trivial) > b) figuring out what (if anything) should be done with > propagation when we have shared subtrees... (not trivial at all) - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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