:You are right that the buffer cache is very tricky. It is hard to
:change it in ways that preserves functionality and performance.
:The port of my buffer locking code from BSD/OS has caused problems
:largely because of a different buffer cache implementation and
:especially SMP models between the two systems (BSD/OS has no spl's
:for example). However, this is not a half baked idea that I have
:come up with and thrown in without thinking. Recursive locking is
:*required* to get stacking filesystems like union and loopback
:working reliably. As they currently stand they are full of code to
:try and track locks at layers all up and down the stack. This code
:is really nasty and in many cases broken (leading to deadlocks or
:crashes). The snapshot code also is most easily implemented with
:recursive locking, the alternative being to put lock monitoring
:all through bmap and block allocation code. So yes, it would be
:wonderful if the world could be simple, and I am not a huge fan of
:the complexity of the buffer locking code. But, I have considered
:the alternatives and they are worse.
:
: Kirk
Wow! Timeout! Miscommunication.
I am talking strictly about struct buf locking. I understand and agree
completely that recursive locking is absolutely necessary for the
VFS layering!
I am not throwing your work out - precisely the opposite, I want to keep
your work pretty much as is except for two things: (1) I want to replace
lockmgr locks ( and I don't mind implementing recursive exclusive locking
in the replacement, though I would rather avoid it! ), and (2) I want to
find a better way to implement the BUF_KERNPROC() stuff... basically I
want to try to find a way to localize the necessary effect in one place
in the code rather then have the BUF_KERNPROC() macros strewn all over the
code. Same effect, slightly different code organization, that's all.
There must be a choke point somewhere where we can put the code.
-Matt
Matthew Dillon
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