lib/iov_iter: Document _copy_to_iter_flushcache()

Add some theory of operation documentation to _copy_to_iter_flushcache().

Reported-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Tony Luck <tony.luck@intel.com>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/153108276767.37979.9462477994086841699.stgit@dwillia2-desk3.amr.corp.intel.com
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>

1 files changed, 14 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/lib/iov_iter.c b/lib/iov_iter.c
index 94fa361be7bb..09fb73ad9d54 100644
--- a/lib/iov_iter.c
+++ b/lib/iov_iter.c
@@ -727,6 +727,20 @@ size_t _copy_from_iter_nocache(void *addr, size_t bytes, struct iov_iter *i)
 EXPORT_SYMBOL(_copy_from_iter_nocache);
 
 #ifdef CONFIG_ARCH_HAS_UACCESS_FLUSHCACHE
+/**
+ * _copy_from_iter_flushcache - write destination through cpu cache
+ * @addr: destination kernel address
+ * @bytes: total transfer length
+ * @iter: source iterator
+ *
+ * The pmem driver arranges for filesystem-dax to use this facility via
+ * dax_copy_from_iter() for ensuring that writes to persistent memory
+ * are flushed through the CPU cache. It is differentiated from
+ * _copy_from_iter_nocache() in that guarantees all data is flushed for
+ * all iterator types. The _copy_from_iter_nocache() only attempts to
+ * bypass the cache for the ITER_IOVEC case, and on some archs may use
+ * instructions that strand dirty-data in the cache.
+ */
 size_t _copy_from_iter_flushcache(void *addr, size_t bytes, struct iov_iter *i)
 {
         char *to = addr;