linux/include
Glauber Costa 4e717f5c10 list_lru: remove special case function list_lru_dispose_all.
The list_lru implementation has one function, list_lru_dispose_all, with
only one user (the dentry code).  At first, such function appears to make
sense because we are really not interested in the result of isolating each
dentry separately - all of them are going away anyway.  However, it's
implementation is buggy in the following way:

When we call list_lru_dispose_all in fs/dcache.c, we scan all dentries
marking them with DCACHE_SHRINK_LIST.  However, this is done without the
nlru->lock taken.  The imediate result of that is that someone else may
add or remove the dentry from the LRU at the same time.  When list_lru_del
happens in that scenario we will see an element that is not yet marked
with DCACHE_SHRINK_LIST (even though it will be in the future) and
obviously remove it from an lru where the element no longer is.  Since
list_lru_dispose_all will in effect count down nlru's nr_items and
list_lru_del will do the same, this will lead to an imbalance.

The solution for this would not be so simple: we can obviously just keep
the lru_lock taken, but then we have no guarantees that we will be able to
acquire the dentry lock (dentry->d_lock).  To properly solve this, we need
a communication mechanism between the lru and dentry code, so they can
coordinate this with each other.

Such mechanism already exists in the form of the list_lru_walk_cb
callback.  So it is possible to construct a dcache-side prune function
that does the right thing only by calling list_lru_walk in a loop until no
more dentries are available.

With only one user, plus the fact that a sane solution for the problem
would involve boucing between dcache and list_lru anyway, I see little
justification to keep the special case list_lru_dispose_all in tree.

Signed-off-by: Glauber Costa <glommer@openvz.org>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz>
Acked-by: Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
History 2013-09-10 18:56:31 -04:00
..
acpi Merge branch 'acpi-hotplug' 2013-08-30 14:14:25 +02:00
asm-generic Merge branch 'for-v3.12' of git://git.linaro.org/people/mszyprowski/linux-dma-mapping 2013-09-09 10:26:33 -07:00
clocksource ARM: SoC cleanups for 3.12 2013-09-06 13:21:16 -07:00
crypto crypto: scatterwalk - Add support for calculating number of SG elements 2013-08-21 21:27:58 +10:00
drm drm/exynos: fimd: replace struct fb_videomode with videomode 2013-09-05 13:43:44 +09:00
dt-bindings The common clk framework changes for 3.12 are dominated by clock driver 2013-09-09 15:49:04 -07:00
keys KEYS: Asymmetric key pluggable data parsers 2012-10-08 13:50:13 +10:30
kvm ARM: KVM: vgic: Bump VGIC_NR_IRQS to 256 2013-08-30 16:12:39 +03:00
linux list_lru: remove special case function list_lru_dispose_all. 2013-09-10 18:56:31 -04:00
math-emu math-emu: correct test for downshifting fraction in _FP_FROM_INT() 2010-07-20 18:45:14 -07:00
media Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net-next 2013-09-05 14:54:29 -07:00
memory ddr: add LPDDR2 data from JESD209-2 2012-05-02 00:04:06 -07:00
misc [media] altera-stapl: it is time to move out from staging 2011-09-23 15:00:57 -03:00
net Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net-next 2013-09-05 14:54:29 -07:00
pcmcia pcmcia/ds.h: introduce helper for pcmcia_driver module boilerplate 2013-03-15 12:26:03 -07:00
ras edac: add support for error type "Info" 2013-02-21 14:16:27 -03:00
rdma Merge branches 'cxgb4', 'flowsteer', 'ipoib', 'iser', 'mlx4', 'ocrdma' and 'qib' into for-next 2013-09-03 09:01:08 -07:00
rxrpc atomic: use <linux/atomic.h> 2011-07-26 16:49:47 -07:00
scsi [SCSI] Generate uevents on certain unit attention codes 2013-08-26 18:52:27 +04:00
sound Merge branch 'v4l_for_linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mchehab/linux-media 2013-09-05 11:55:59 -07:00
target target: make queue_tm_rsp() return void 2013-07-07 18:36:53 -07:00
trace NFS client updates for Linux 3.12 2013-09-09 09:19:15 -07:00
uapi fs: bump inode and dentry counters to long 2013-09-10 18:56:29 -04:00
video fbdev changes for 3.12: 2013-09-05 09:49:32 -07:00
xen Features: 2013-09-04 17:45:39 -07:00
Kbuild UAPI: remove empty Kbuild files 2013-04-30 17:04:09 -07:00