From: Steven Rostedt on
[ Removed matthew(a)wil.cx since I'm getting errors in sending to that address ]


On Sat, 2010-05-29 at 09:59 +0800, Changli Gao wrote:
> On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 6:06 PM, Changli Gao <xiaosuo(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 5:40 PM, Miklos Szeredi <miklos(a)szeredi.hu> wrote:
> >> On Wed, 26 May 2010, Changli Gao wrote:
> >>> remove flags paramter of do_splice_direct().
> >>>
> >>> the flags parameter of do_splice_direct() doesn't mean non-block read of
> >>> in file,
> >>
> >> Actually, it does. Look at the SPLICE_F_NONBLOCK usage in
> >> __generic_splice_file_read().
> >>
> >
> > Oh, I checked the code again. You're right. However, why don't we
> > check the flags of in file instead in __generic_file_splice_read()?
> >
>
> I am afraid that __generic_file_splice_read() should not use SPLICE_F_NONBLOCK.
>
> Here is the comment from the commit 42324c62704365d6a3e89138dea55909d2f26afe :
>
> <<EOF
> Linus introduced SPLICE_F_NONBLOCK in commit
> 29e350944fdc2dfca102500790d8ad6d6ff4f69d
> (splice: add SPLICE_F_NONBLOCK flag )
>
> It doesn't make the splice itself necessarily nonblocking (because the
> actual file descriptors that are spliced from/to may block unless they
> have the O_NONBLOCK flag set), but it makes the splice pipe operations
> nonblocking.
>
> Linus intention was clear : let SPLICE_F_NONBLOCK control the splice
> pipe mode only
> EOF
>
> And I have greped the whole code:
>


> kernel/trace/trace.c: if (flags & SPLICE_F_NONBLOCK)
>
> besides the __generic_file_splice_read(), there are two users: relay
> and trace. I believe they all misuse this flag.
>


The trace splice never blocks anyway. Since we have no good method to
wake up a waiter. That is, we never know if it is safe to call wakeup,
because a tracepoint may be in a section where the rq lock is held.

The only thing that passing SPLICE_F_NONBLOCK does in that code is to
return -EAGAIN when there is nothing in the buffer. Otherwise, it
returns 0.

-- Steve



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From: Steven Rostedt on
On Sun, 2010-05-30 at 07:58 +0800, Changli Gao wrote:
> On Sun, May 30, 2010 at 12:20 AM, Steven Rostedt <rostedt(a)goodmis.org> wrote:
> > [ Removed matthew(a)wil.cx since I'm getting errors in sending to that address ]
> >

> But why not use (file->f_flags & O_NONBLOCK) instead, as
> tracing_splice_read_pipe() does?

Probably because I copied the code from something that used
SPLICE_F_NONBLOCK ;-)

But userspace passes that flag too. Although, maybe I just don't
understand the API fully.

-- Steve



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