[PATCH] files: files struct with RCU

Patch to eliminate struct files_struct.file_lock spinlock on the reader side
and use rcu refcounting rcuref_xxx api for the f_count refcounter.  The
updates to the fdtable are done by allocating a new fdtable structure and
setting files->fdt to point to the new structure.  The fdtable structure is
protected by RCU thereby allowing lock-free lookup.  For fd arrays/sets that
are vmalloced, we use keventd to free them since RCU callbacks can't sleep.  A
global list of fdtable to be freed is not scalable, so we use a per-cpu list.
If keventd is already handling the current cpu's work, we use a timer to defer
queueing of that work.

Since the last publication, this patch has been re-written to avoid using
explicit memory barriers and use rcu_assign_pointer(), rcu_dereference()
premitives instead.  This required that the fd information is kept in a
separate structure (fdtable) and updated atomically.

Signed-off-by: Dipankar Sarma <dipankar@in.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>

1 files changed, 3 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/fs.h b/include/linux/fs.h
index fd93ab7da905..7f61227827d7 100644
--- a/include/linux/fs.h
+++ b/include/linux/fs.h
@@ -9,6 +9,7 @@
 #include <linux/config.h>
 #include <linux/limits.h>
 #include <linux/ioctl.h>
+#include <linux/rcuref.h>
 
 /*
  * It's silly to have NR_OPEN bigger than NR_FILE, but you can change
@@ -597,12 +598,13 @@ struct file {
         spinlock_t              f_ep_lock;
 #endif /* #ifdef CONFIG_EPOLL */
         struct address_space    *f_mapping;
+        struct rcu_head         f_rcuhead;
 };
 extern spinlock_t files_lock;
 #define file_list_lock() spin_lock(&files_lock);
 #define file_list_unlock() spin_unlock(&files_lock);
 
-#define get_file(x)     atomic_inc(&(x)->f_count)
+#define get_file(x)     rcuref_inc(&(x)->f_count)
 #define file_count(x)   atomic_read(&(x)->f_count)
 
 #define MAX_NON_LFS     ((1UL<<31) - 1)