Linux-2.6.12-rc2v2.6.12-rc2

Initial git repository build. I'm not bothering with the full history,
even though we have it. We can create a separate "historical" git
archive of that later if we want to, and in the meantime it's about
3.2GB when imported into git - space that would just make the early
git days unnecessarily complicated, when we don't have a lot of good
infrastructure for it.

Let it rip!

1 files changed, 113 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/directory-locking b/Documentation/filesystems/directory-locking
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+        Locking scheme used for directory operations is based on two
+kinds of locks - per-inode (->i_sem) and per-filesystem (->s_vfs_rename_sem).
+
+        For our purposes all operations fall in 5 classes:
+
+1) read access.  Locking rules: caller locks directory we are accessing.
+
+2) object creation.  Locking rules: same as above.
+
+3) object removal.  Locking rules: caller locks parent, finds victim,
+locks victim and calls the method.
+
+4) rename() that is _not_ cross-directory.  Locking rules: caller locks
+the parent, finds source and target, if target already exists - locks it
+and then calls the method.
+
+5) link creation.  Locking rules:
+        * lock parent
+        * check that source is not a directory
+        * lock source
+        * call the method.
+
+6) cross-directory rename.  The trickiest in the whole bunch.  Locking
+rules:
+        * lock the filesystem
+        * lock parents in "ancestors first" order.
+        * find source and target.
+        * if old parent is equal to or is a descendent of target
+                fail with -ENOTEMPTY
+        * if new parent is equal to or is a descendent of source
+                fail with -ELOOP
+        * if target exists - lock it.
+        * call the method.
+
+
+The rules above obviously guarantee that all directories that are going to be
+read, modified or removed by method will be locked by caller.
+
+
+If no directory is its own ancestor, the scheme above is deadlock-free.
+Proof:
+
+        First of all, at any moment we have a partial ordering of the
+objects - A < B iff A is an ancestor of B.
+
+        That ordering can change.  However, the following is true:
+
+(1) if object removal or non-cross-directory rename holds lock on A and
+    attempts to acquire lock on B, A will remain the parent of B until we
+    acquire the lock on B.  (Proof: only cross-directory rename can change
+    the parent of object and it would have to lock the parent).
+
+(2) if cross-directory rename holds the lock on filesystem, order will not
+    change until rename acquires all locks.  (Proof: other cross-directory
+    renames will be blocked on filesystem lock and we don't start changing
+    the order until we had acquired all locks).
+
+(3) any operation holds at most one lock on non-directory object and
+    that lock is acquired after all other locks.  (Proof: see descriptions
+    of operations).
+
+        Now consider the minimal deadlock.  Each process is blocked on
+attempt to acquire some lock and already holds at least one lock.  Let's
+consider the set of contended locks.  First of all, filesystem lock is
+not contended, since any process blocked on it is not holding any locks.
+Thus all processes are blocked on ->i_sem.
+
+        Non-directory objects are not contended due to (3).  Thus link
+creation can't be a part of deadlock - it can't be blocked on source
+and it means that it doesn't hold any locks.
+
+        Any contended object is either held by cross-directory rename or
+has a child that is also contended.  Indeed, suppose that it is held by
+operation other than cross-directory rename.  Then the lock this operation
+is blocked on belongs to child of that object due to (1).
+
+        It means that one of the operations is cross-directory rename.
+Otherwise the set of contended objects would be infinite - each of them
+would have a contended child and we had assumed that no object is its
+own descendent.  Moreover, there is exactly one cross-directory rename
+(see above).
+
+        Consider the object blocking the cross-directory rename.  One
+of its descendents is locked by cross-directory rename (otherwise we
+would again have an infinite set of of contended objects).  But that
+means that cross-directory rename is taking locks out of order.  Due
+to (2) the order hadn't changed since we had acquired filesystem lock.
+But locking rules for cross-directory rename guarantee that we do not
+try to acquire lock on descendent before the lock on ancestor.
+Contradiction.  I.e.  deadlock is impossible.  Q.E.D.
+
+
+        These operations are guaranteed to avoid loop creation.  Indeed,
+the only operation that could introduce loops is cross-directory rename.
+Since the only new (parent, child) pair added by rename() is (new parent,
+source), such loop would have to contain these objects and the rest of it
+would have to exist before rename().  I.e. at the moment of loop creation
+rename() responsible for that would be holding filesystem lock and new parent
+would have to be equal to or a descendent of source.  But that means that
+new parent had been equal to or a descendent of source since the moment when
+we had acquired filesystem lock and rename() would fail with -ELOOP in that
+case.
+
+        While this locking scheme works for arbitrary DAGs, it relies on
+ability to check that directory is a descendent of another object.  Current
+implementation assumes that directory graph is a tree.  This assumption is
+also preserved by all operations (cross-directory rename on a tree that would
+not introduce a cycle will leave it a tree and link() fails for directories).
+
+        Notice that "directory" in the above == "anything that might have
+children", so if we are going to introduce hybrid objects we will need
+either to make sure that link(2) doesn't work for them or to make changes
+in is_subdir() that would make it work even in presence of such beasts.