Re: [dpdk-dev] [PATCH 2/2] mem: revert to using flock() and add per-segment lockfiles

[Bruce Richardson <bruce.richardson@intel.com>]

On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 01:26:29PM +0100, Anatoly Burakov wrote:
> The original implementation used flock() locks, but was later
> switched to using fcntl() locks for page locking, because
> fcntl() locks allow locking parts of a file, which is useful
> for single-file segments mode, where locking the entire file
> isn't as useful because we still need to grow and shrink it.
> 
> However, according to fcntl()'s Ubuntu manpage [1], semantics of
> fcntl() locks have a giant oversight:
> 
>   This interface follows the completely stupid semantics of System
>   V and IEEE Std 1003.1-1988 (“POSIX.1”) that require that all
>   locks associated with a file for a given process are removed
>   when any file descriptor for that file is closed by that process.
>   This semantic means that applications must be aware of any files
>   that a subroutine library may access.
> 
> Basically, closing *any* fd with an fcntl() lock (which we do because
> we don't want to leak fd's) will drop the lock completely.
> 
> So, in this commit, we will be reverting back to using flock() locks
> everywhere. However, that still leaves the problem of locking parts
> of a memseg list file in single file segments mode, and we will be
> solving it with creating separate lock files per each page, and
> tracking those with flock().
> 
> We will also be removing all of this tailq business and replacing it
> with a simple array - saving a few bytes is not worth the extra
> hassle of dealing with pointers and potential memory allocation
> failures. Also, remove the tailq lock since it is not needed - these
> fd lists are per-process, and within a given process, it is always
> only one thread handling access to hugetlbfs.
> 
> So, first one to allocate a segment will create a lockfile, and put
> a shared lock on it. When we're shrinking the page file, we will be
> trying to take out a write lock on that lockfile, which would fail if
> any other process is holding onto the lockfile as well. This way, we
> can know if we can shrink the segment file. Also, if no other locks
> are found in the lock list for a given memseg list, the memseg list
> fd is automatically closed.
> 
> One other thing to note is, according to flock() Ubuntu manpage [2],
> upgrading the lock from shared to exclusive is implemented by dropping
> and reacquiring the lock, which is not atomic and thus would have
> created race conditions. So, on attempting to perform operations in
> hugetlbfs, we will take out a writelock on hugetlbfs directory, so
> that only one process could perform hugetlbfs operations concurrently.
> 
> [1] http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/artful/en/man2/fcntl.2freebsd.html
> [2] http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/bionic/en/man2/flock.2.html
> 
> Fixes: 66cc45e293ed ("mem: replace memseg with memseg lists")
> Fixes: 582bed1e1d1d ("mem: support mapping hugepages at runtime")
> Fixes: a5ff05d60fc5 ("mem: support unmapping pages at runtime")
> Fixes: 2a04139f66b4 ("eal: add single file segments option")
> Cc: anatoly.burakov@intel.com
> 
> Signed-off-by: Anatoly Burakov <anatoly.burakov@intel.com>
> ---

While the memory subsystem in DPDK has changed a lot since I last looked at
it, thereby preventing me from doing an in-depth review, this change makes
sense to me. So for this and any future versions:

Acked-by: Bruce Richardson <bruce.richardson@intel.com>