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+                       ================================
+                       ASYNCHRONOUS OPERATIONS HANDLING
+                       ================================
+
+By: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
+
+Contents:
+
+ (*) Overview.
+
+ (*) Operation record initialisation.
+
+ (*) Parameters.
+
+ (*) Procedure.
+
+ (*) Asynchronous callback.
+
+
+========
+OVERVIEW
+========
+
+FS-Cache has an asynchronous operations handling facility that it uses for its
+data storage and retrieval routines.  Its operations are represented by
+fscache_operation structs, though these are usually embedded into some other
+structure.
+
+This facility is available to and expected to be be used by the cache backends,
+and FS-Cache will create operations and pass them off to the appropriate cache
+backend for completion.
+
+To make use of this facility, <linux/fscache-cache.h> should be #included.
+
+
+===============================
+OPERATION RECORD INITIALISATION
+===============================
+
+An operation is recorded in an fscache_operation struct:
+
+        struct fscache_operation {
+                union {
+                        struct work_struct fast_work;
+                        struct slow_work slow_work;
+                };
+                unsigned long           flags;
+                fscache_operation_processor_t processor;
+                ...
+        };
+
+Someone wanting to issue an operation should allocate something with this
+struct embedded in it.  They should initialise it by calling:
+
+        void fscache_operation_init(struct fscache_operation *op,
+                                    fscache_operation_release_t release);
+
+with the operation to be initialised and the release function to use.
+
+The op->flags parameter should be set to indicate the CPU time provision and
+the exclusivity (see the Parameters section).
+
+The op->fast_work, op->slow_work and op->processor flags should be set as
+appropriate for the CPU time provision (see the Parameters section).
+
+FSCACHE_OP_WAITING may be set in op->flags prior to each submission of the
+operation and waited for afterwards.
+
+
+==========
+PARAMETERS
+==========
+
+There are a number of parameters that can be set in the operation record's flag
+parameter.  There are three options for the provision of CPU time in these
+operations:
+
+ (1) The operation may be done synchronously (FSCACHE_OP_MYTHREAD).  A thread
+     may decide it wants to handle an operation itself without deferring it to
+     another thread.
+
+     This is, for example, used in read operations for calling readpages() on
+     the backing filesystem in CacheFiles.  Although readpages() does an
+     asynchronous data fetch, the determination of whether pages exist is done
+     synchronously - and the netfs does not proceed until this has been
+     determined.
+
+     If this option is to be used, FSCACHE_OP_WAITING must be set in op->flags
+     before submitting the operation, and the operating thread must wait for it
+     to be cleared before proceeding:
+
+                wait_on_bit(&op->flags, FSCACHE_OP_WAITING,
+                            fscache_wait_bit, TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE);
+
+
+ (2) The operation may be fast asynchronous (FSCACHE_OP_FAST), in which case it
+     will be given to keventd to process.  Such an operation is not permitted
+     to sleep on I/O.
+
+     This is, for example, used by CacheFiles to copy data from a backing fs
+     page to a netfs page after the backing fs has read the page in.
+
+     If this option is used, op->fast_work and op->processor must be
+     initialised before submitting the operation:
+
+                INIT_WORK(&op->fast_work, do_some_work);
+
+
+ (3) The operation may be slow asynchronous (FSCACHE_OP_SLOW), in which case it
+     will be given to the slow work facility to process.  Such an operation is
+     permitted to sleep on I/O.
+
+     This is, for example, used by FS-Cache to handle background writes of
+     pages that have just been fetched from a remote server.
+
+     If this option is used, op->slow_work and op->processor must be
+     initialised before submitting the operation:
+
+                fscache_operation_init_slow(op, processor)
+
+
+Furthermore, operations may be one of two types:
+
+ (1) Exclusive (FSCACHE_OP_EXCLUSIVE).  Operations of this type may not run in
+     conjunction with any other operation on the object being operated upon.
+
+     An example of this is the attribute change operation, in which the file
+     being written to may need truncation.
+
+ (2) Shareable.  Operations of this type may be running simultaneously.  It's
+     up to the operation implementation to prevent interference between other
+     operations running at the same time.
+
+
+=========
+PROCEDURE
+=========
+
+Operations are used through the following procedure:
+
+ (1) The submitting thread must allocate the operation and initialise it
+     itself.  Normally this would be part of a more specific structure with the
+     generic op embedded within.
+
+ (2) The submitting thread must then submit the operation for processing using
+     one of the following two functions:
+
+        int fscache_submit_op(struct fscache_object *object,
+                              struct fscache_operation *op);
+
+        int fscache_submit_exclusive_op(struct fscache_object *object,
+                                        struct fscache_operation *op);
+
+     The first function should be used to submit non-exclusive ops and the
+     second to submit exclusive ones.  The caller must still set the
+     FSCACHE_OP_EXCLUSIVE flag.
+
+     If successful, both functions will assign the operation to the specified
+     object and return 0.  -ENOBUFS will be returned if the object specified is
+     permanently unavailable.
+
+     The operation manager will defer operations on an object that is still
+     undergoing lookup or creation.  The operation will also be deferred if an
+     operation of conflicting exclusivity is in progress on the object.
+
+     If the operation is asynchronous, the manager will retain a reference to
+     it, so the caller should put their reference to it by passing it to:
+
+        void fscache_put_operation(struct fscache_operation *op);
+
+ (3) If the submitting thread wants to do the work itself, and has marked the
+     operation with FSCACHE_OP_MYTHREAD, then it should monitor
+     FSCACHE_OP_WAITING as described above and check the state of the object if
+     necessary (the object might have died whilst the thread was waiting).
+
+     When it has finished doing its processing, it should call
+     fscache_put_operation() on it.
+
+ (4) The operation holds an effective lock upon the object, preventing other
+     exclusive ops conflicting until it is released.  The operation can be
+     enqueued for further immediate asynchronous processing by adjusting the
+     CPU time provisioning option if necessary, eg:
+
+        op->flags &= ~FSCACHE_OP_TYPE;
+        op->flags |= ~FSCACHE_OP_FAST;
+
+     and calling:
+
+        void fscache_enqueue_operation(struct fscache_operation *op)
+
+     This can be used to allow other things to have use of the worker thread
+     pools.
+
+
+=====================
+ASYNCHRONOUS CALLBACK
+=====================
+
+When used in asynchronous mode, the worker thread pool will invoke the
+processor method with a pointer to the operation.  This should then get at the
+container struct by using container_of():
+
+        static void fscache_write_op(struct fscache_operation *_op)
+        {
+                struct fscache_storage *op =
+                        container_of(_op, struct fscache_storage, op);
+        ...
+        }
+
+The caller holds a reference on the operation, and will invoke
+fscache_put_operation() when the processor function returns.  The processor
+function is at liberty to call fscache_enqueue_operation() or to take extra
+references.