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NeilBrown f1ee616214 VFS: don't keep disconnected dentries on d_anon
The original purpose of the per-superblock d_anon list was to
keep disconnected dentries in the cache between consecutive
requests to the NFS server.  Dentries can be disconnected if
a client holds a file open and repeatedly performs IO on it,
and if the server drops the dentry, whether due to memory
pressure, server restart, or "echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches".

This purpose was thwarted by commit 75a6f82a0d ("freeing unlinked
file indefinitely delayed") which caused disconnected dentries
to be freed as soon as their refcount reached zero.

This means that, when a dentry being used by nfsd gets disconnected, a
new one needs to be allocated for every request (unless requests
overlap).  As the dentry has no name, no parent, and no children,
there is little of value to cache.  As small memory allocations are
typically fast (from per-cpu free lists) this likely has little cost.

This means that the original purpose of s_anon is no longer relevant:
there is no longer any need to keep disconnected dentries on a list so
they appear to be hashed.

However, s_anon now has a new use.  When you mount an NFS filesystem,
the dentry stored in s_root is just a placebo.  The "real" root dentry
is allocated using d_obtain_root() and so it kept on the s_anon list.
I don't know the reason for this, but suspect it related to NFSv4
where a mount of "server:/some/path" require NFS to look up the root
filehandle on the server, then walk down "/some" and "/path" to get
the filehandle to mount.

Whatever the reason, NFS depends on the s_anon list and on
shrink_dcache_for_umount() pruning all dentries on this list.  So we
cannot simply remove s_anon.

We could just leave the code unchanged, but apart from that being
potentially confusing, the (unfair) bit-spin-lock which protects
s_anon can become a bottle neck when lots of disconnected dentries are
being created.

So this patch renames s_anon to s_roots, and stops storing
disconnected dentries on the list.  Only dentries obtained with
d_obtain_root() are now stored on this list.  There are many fewer of
these (only NFS and NILFS2 use the call, and only during filesystem
mount) so contention on the bit-lock will not be a problem.

Possibly an alternate solution should be found for NFS and NILFS2, but
that would require understanding their needs first.

Signed-off-by: NeilBrown <neilb@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
2017-12-25 20:22:07 -05:00
Documentation VFS: don't keep disconnected dentries on d_anon 2017-12-25 20:22:07 -05:00
arch Merge branch 'fixes' of git://git.armlinux.org.uk/~rmk/linux-arm 2017-11-26 15:03:49 -08:00
block treewide: setup_timer() -> timer_setup() 2017-11-21 15:57:07 -08:00
certs License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
crypto Keys devel 2017-11-24 11:54:11 +11:00
drivers VFS: don't keep disconnected dentries on d_anon 2017-12-25 20:22:07 -05:00
firmware kbuild: remove all dummy assignments to obj- 2017-11-18 11:46:06 +09:00
fs VFS: don't keep disconnected dentries on d_anon 2017-12-25 20:22:07 -05:00
include VFS: don't keep disconnected dentries on d_anon 2017-12-25 20:22:07 -05:00
init EXPERT Kconfig menu: fix broken EXPERT menu 2017-11-17 16:10:05 -08:00
ipc Merge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew) 2017-11-17 16:56:17 -08:00
kernel Merge branch 'irq-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2017-11-26 14:39:20 -08:00
lib Fix misannotated out-of-line _copy_to_user() 2017-12-11 09:35:11 -05:00
mm block/laptop_mode: Convert timers to use timer_setup() 2017-11-21 15:46:44 -08:00
net Merge branch 'timers-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2017-11-25 08:37:16 -10:00
samples kbuild: remove all dummy assignments to obj- 2017-11-18 11:46:06 +09:00
scripts Merge branch 'timers-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2017-11-25 08:37:16 -10:00
security Merge branch 'timers-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2017-11-25 08:37:16 -10:00
sound Merge branch 'timers-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2017-11-25 08:37:16 -10:00
tools Merge branch 'x86-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2017-11-26 14:11:54 -08:00
usr initramfs: fix initramfs rebuilds w/ compression after disabling 2017-11-03 07:39:19 -07:00
virt Trimmed second batch of KVM changes for Linux 4.15 2017-11-24 19:44:25 -10:00
.cocciconfig
.get_maintainer.ignore
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set git diff driver for C source code files 2016-10-07 18:46:30 -07:00
.gitignore Kbuild misc updates for v4.15 2017-11-17 17:51:33 -08:00
.mailmap Add Jason Gunthorpe as co-maintainer of the RDMA stack 2017-11-17 09:36:18 -08:00
COPYING
CREDITS MAINTAINERS: update TPM driver infrastructure changes 2017-11-09 17:58:40 -08:00
Kbuild Kbuild updates for v4.15 2017-11-17 17:45:29 -08:00
Kconfig License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
MAINTAINERS RTC for 4.15 2017-11-22 20:58:23 -10:00
Makefile Linux 4.15-rc1 2017-11-26 16:01:47 -08:00
README README: add a new README file, pointing to the Documentation/ 2016-10-24 08:12:35 -02:00

README

Linux kernel
============

This file was moved to Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst

Please notice that there are several guides for kernel developers and users.
These guides can be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what is contained in each file.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.