summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/Documentation/filesystems/dax.txt
AgeCommit message (Collapse)Author
2018-01-28powerpc/cell: Remove axonram driverMichael Ellerman
The QS21/22 IBM Cell blades had a southbridge chip called Axon. This could have DDR DIMMs attached to it, though they were not directly usable as RAM, instead they could be used as some sort of buffer, if applications were written specifically to use the block device provided by the driver. Although the driver supposedly had direct access support, it was apparently never tested (see commit 91117a20245b ("axonram: Fix bug in direct_access")). These machines have not been available for over 5 years, and were never widely in use. It seems highly unlikely anyone is using this driver. In general we're happy to leave old drivers in the tree, but because DAX is involved this driver is caught up in the ongoing work in that area, but none of the DAX folks are able to test it. So remove the driver, if any one *is* using it, we'll be happy to put it back. Signed-off-by: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>
2017-09-06dax: use common 4k zero page for dax mmap readsRoss Zwisler
When servicing mmap() reads from file holes the current DAX code allocates a page cache page of all zeroes and places the struct page pointer in the mapping->page_tree radix tree. This has three major drawbacks: 1) It consumes memory unnecessarily. For every 4k page that is read via a DAX mmap() over a hole, we allocate a new page cache page. This means that if you read 1GiB worth of pages, you end up using 1GiB of zeroed memory. This is easily visible by looking at the overall memory consumption of the system or by looking at /proc/[pid]/smaps: 7f62e72b3000-7f63272b3000 rw-s 00000000 103:00 12 /root/dax/data Size: 1048576 kB Rss: 1048576 kB Pss: 1048576 kB Shared_Clean: 0 kB Shared_Dirty: 0 kB Private_Clean: 1048576 kB Private_Dirty: 0 kB Referenced: 1048576 kB Anonymous: 0 kB LazyFree: 0 kB AnonHugePages: 0 kB ShmemPmdMapped: 0 kB Shared_Hugetlb: 0 kB Private_Hugetlb: 0 kB Swap: 0 kB SwapPss: 0 kB KernelPageSize: 4 kB MMUPageSize: 4 kB Locked: 0 kB 2) It is slower than using a common zero page because each page fault has more work to do. Instead of just inserting a common zero page we have to allocate a page cache page, zero it, and then insert it. Here are the average latencies of dax_load_hole() as measured by ftrace on a random test box: Old method, using zeroed page cache pages: 3.4 us New method, using the common 4k zero page: 0.8 us This was the average latency over 1 GiB of sequential reads done by this simple fio script: [global] size=1G filename=/root/dax/data fallocate=none [io] rw=read ioengine=mmap 3) The fact that we had to check for both DAX exceptional entries and for page cache pages in the radix tree made the DAX code more complex. Solve these issues by following the lead of the DAX PMD code and using a common 4k zero page instead. As with the PMD code we will now insert a DAX exceptional entry into the radix tree instead of a struct page pointer which allows us to remove all the special casing in the DAX code. Note that we do still pretty aggressively check for regular pages in the DAX radix tree, especially where we take action based on the bits set in the page. If we ever find a regular page in our radix tree now that most likely means that someone besides DAX is inserting pages (which has happened lots of times in the past), and we want to find that out early and fail loudly. This solution also removes the extra memory consumption. Here is that same /proc/[pid]/smaps after 1GiB of reading from a hole with the new code: 7f2054a74000-7f2094a74000 rw-s 00000000 103:00 12 /root/dax/data Size: 1048576 kB Rss: 0 kB Pss: 0 kB Shared_Clean: 0 kB Shared_Dirty: 0 kB Private_Clean: 0 kB Private_Dirty: 0 kB Referenced: 0 kB Anonymous: 0 kB LazyFree: 0 kB AnonHugePages: 0 kB ShmemPmdMapped: 0 kB Shared_Hugetlb: 0 kB Private_Hugetlb: 0 kB Swap: 0 kB SwapPss: 0 kB KernelPageSize: 4 kB MMUPageSize: 4 kB Locked: 0 kB Overall system memory consumption is similarly improved. Another major change is that we remove dax_pfn_mkwrite() from our fault flow, and instead rely on the page fault itself to make the PTE dirty and writeable. The following description from the patch adding the vm_insert_mixed_mkwrite() call explains this a little more: "To be able to use the common 4k zero page in DAX we need to have our PTE fault path look more like our PMD fault path where a PTE entry can be marked as dirty and writeable as it is first inserted rather than waiting for a follow-up dax_pfn_mkwrite() => finish_mkwrite_fault() call. Right now we can rely on having a dax_pfn_mkwrite() call because we can distinguish between these two cases in do_wp_page(): case 1: 4k zero page => writable DAX storage case 2: read-only DAX storage => writeable DAX storage This distinction is made by via vm_normal_page(). vm_normal_page() returns false for the common 4k zero page, though, just as it does for DAX ptes. Instead of special casing the DAX + 4k zero page case we will simplify our DAX PTE page fault sequence so that it matches our DAX PMD sequence, and get rid of the dax_pfn_mkwrite() helper. We will instead use dax_iomap_fault() to handle write-protection faults. This means that insert_pfn() needs to follow the lead of insert_pfn_pmd() and allow us to pass in a 'mkwrite' flag. If 'mkwrite' is set insert_pfn() will do the work that was previously done by wp_page_reuse() as part of the dax_pfn_mkwrite() call path" Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20170724170616.25810-4-ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com Signed-off-by: Ross Zwisler <ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com> Reviewed-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Cc: "Darrick J. Wong" <darrick.wong@oracle.com> Cc: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu> Cc: Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk> Cc: Andreas Dilger <adilger.kernel@dilger.ca> Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Cc: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com> Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> Cc: Matthew Wilcox <mawilcox@microsoft.com> Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> Cc: Kirill A. Shutemov <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2016-11-20dax: rip out get_block based IO supportJan Kara
No one uses functions using the get_block callback anymore. Rip them out and update documentation. Reviewed-by: Ross Zwisler <ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
2016-10-01dax : Fix documentation with respect to struct pagesStephen Bates
The documentation for dax is not up to date with respect to the struct page support available in some of the device drivers that utilize it. Signed-off-by: Stephen Bates <sbates@raithlin.com> Acked-by: Ross Zwisler <ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com> Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2016-07-26dax: some small updates to dax.txt documentationRoss Zwisler
These are originally from Matthew Wilcox and were part of his huge "mm,fs,dax: Change ->pmd_fault to ->huge_fault" patch that was part of PUD support. I'm breaking these small changes out as they stand on their own and add useful information to Documentation/filesystems/dax.txt. Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20160714214049.20075-1-ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com Signed-off-by: Ross Zwisler <ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com> Cc: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu> Cc: Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk> Cc: Andreas Dilger <adilger.kernel@dilger.ca> Cc: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.com> Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2016-05-18dax: for truncate/hole-punch, do zeroing through the driver if possibleVishal Verma
In the truncate or hole-punch path in dax, we clear out sub-page ranges. If these sub-page ranges are sector aligned and sized, we can do the zeroing through the driver instead so that error-clearing is handled automatically. For sub-sector ranges, we still have to rely on clear_pmem and have the possibility of tripping over errors. Cc: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com> Cc: Ross Zwisler <ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com> Cc: Jeff Moyer <jmoyer@redhat.com> Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Reviewed-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Vishal Verma <vishal.l.verma@intel.com>
2015-09-08dax: add huge page fault supportMatthew Wilcox
This is the support code for DAX-enabled filesystems to allow them to provide huge pages in response to faults. Signed-off-by: Matthew Wilcox <willy@linux.intel.com> Cc: Hillf Danton <dhillf@gmail.com> Cc: "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com> Cc: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2015-07-04dax: Add block size note to documentationMatthew Wilcox
For block devices which are small enough, mkfs will default to creating a filesystem with block sizes smaller than page size. Signed-off-by: Matthew Wilcox <willy@linux.intel.com> Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
2015-02-16dax: does not work correctly with virtual aliasing cachesMatthew Wilcox
The DAX code accesses the underlying storage through the kernel's linear mapping, which may not be cache-coherent with user mappings on ARM, MIPS or SPARC. Temporarily disable the DAX code until this problem is resolved. The original XIP code also had this problem, but it was never noticed. Signed-off-by: Matthew Wilcox <matthew.r.wilcox@intel.com> Cc: Andreas Dilger <andreas.dilger@intel.com> Cc: Boaz Harrosh <boaz@plexistor.com> Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> Cc: Kirill A. Shutemov <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com> Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com> Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org> Cc: Ross Zwisler <ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com> Cc: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> Cc: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org> Cc: Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2015-02-16ext4: add DAX functionalityRoss Zwisler
This is a port of the DAX functionality found in the current version of ext2. [matthew.r.wilcox@intel.com: heavily tweaked] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: remap_pages went away] Signed-off-by: Ross Zwisler <ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com> Reviewed-by: Andreas Dilger <andreas.dilger@intel.com> Signed-off-by: Matthew Wilcox <matthew.r.wilcox@intel.com> Cc: Boaz Harrosh <boaz@plexistor.com> Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> Cc: Kirill A. Shutemov <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com> Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com> Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org> Cc: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2015-02-16dax: add dax_zero_page_rangeMatthew Wilcox
This new function allows us to support hole-punch for DAX files by zeroing a partial page, as opposed to the dax_truncate_page() function which can only truncate to the end of the page. Reimplement dax_truncate_page() to call dax_zero_page_range(). [ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com: ported to 3.13-rc2] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix typos in comments] Signed-off-by: Matthew Wilcox <matthew.r.wilcox@intel.com> Signed-off-by: Ross Zwisler <ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com> Cc: Andreas Dilger <andreas.dilger@intel.com> Cc: Boaz Harrosh <boaz@plexistor.com> Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> Cc: Kirill A. Shutemov <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com> Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com> Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org> Cc: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2015-02-16dax: replace XIP documentation with DAX documentationMatthew Wilcox
Based on the original XIP documentation, this documents the current state of affairs, and includes instructions on how users can enable DAX if their devices and kernel support it. Signed-off-by: Matthew Wilcox <willy@linux.intel.com> Reviewed-by: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org> Cc: Andreas Dilger <andreas.dilger@intel.com> Cc: Boaz Harrosh <boaz@plexistor.com> Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> Cc: Kirill A. Shutemov <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com> Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com> Cc: Ross Zwisler <ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com> Cc: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>