fs: icache RCU free inodes

RCU free the struct inode. This will allow:

- Subsequent store-free path walking patch. The inode must be consulted for
  permissions when walking, so an RCU inode reference is a must.
- sb_inode_list_lock to be moved inside i_lock because sb list walkers who want
  to take i_lock no longer need to take sb_inode_list_lock to walk the list in
  the first place. This will simplify and optimize locking.
- Could remove some nested trylock loops in dcache code
- Could potentially simplify things a bit in VM land. Do not need to take the
  page lock to follow page->mapping.

The downsides of this is the performance cost of using RCU. In a simple
creat/unlink microbenchmark, performance drops by about 10% due to inability to
reuse cache-hot slab objects. As iterations increase and RCU freeing starts
kicking over, this increases to about 20%.

In cases where inode lifetimes are longer (ie. many inodes may be allocated
during the average life span of a single inode), a lot of this cache reuse is
not applicable, so the regression caused by this patch is smaller.

The cache-hot regression could largely be avoided by using SLAB_DESTROY_BY_RCU,
however this adds some complexity to list walking and store-free path walking,
so I prefer to implement this at a later date, if it is shown to be a win in
real situations. I haven't found a regression in any non-micro benchmark so I
doubt it will be a problem.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@kernel.dk>

1 files changed, 8 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/fs/fat/inode.c b/fs/fat/inode.c
index ad6998a92c3..8cccfebee18 100644
--- a/fs/fat/inode.c
+++ b/fs/fat/inode.c
@@ -514,11 +514,18 @@ static struct inode *fat_alloc_inode(struct super_block *sb)
 	return &ei->vfs_inode;
 }
 
-static void fat_destroy_inode(struct inode *inode)
+static void fat_i_callback(struct rcu_head *head)
 {
+	struct inode *inode = container_of(head, struct inode, i_rcu);
+	INIT_LIST_HEAD(&inode->i_dentry);
 	kmem_cache_free(fat_inode_cachep, MSDOS_I(inode));
 }
 
+static void fat_destroy_inode(struct inode *inode)
+{
+	call_rcu(&inode->i_rcu, fat_i_callback);
+}
+
 static void init_once(void *foo)
 {
 	struct msdos_inode_info *ei = (struct msdos_inode_info *)foo;