fs: rcu-walk aware d_revalidate method

[pandora-kernel.git] / Documentation / filesystems / porting

diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/porting b/Documentation/filesystems/porting
index ccf0ce7..cd9756a 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/porting
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/porting
@@ -360,3 +360,23 @@ i_dentry to be reinitialized before it is freed, so an:
   INIT_LIST_HEAD(&inode->i_dentry);
 
 must be done in the RCU callback.
+
+--
+[recommended]
+       vfs now tries to do path walking in "rcu-walk mode", which avoids
+atomic operations and scalability hazards on dentries and inodes (see
+Documentation/filesystems/path-walk.txt). d_hash and d_compare changes (above)
+are examples of the changes required to support this. For more complex
+filesystem callbacks, the vfs drops out of rcu-walk mode before the fs call, so
+no changes are required to the filesystem. However, this is costly and loses
+the benefits of rcu-walk mode. We will begin to add filesystem callbacks that
+are rcu-walk aware, shown below. Filesystems should take advantage of this
+where possible.
+
+--
+[mandatory]
+       d_revalidate is a callback that is made on every path element (if
+the filesystem provides it), which requires dropping out of rcu-walk mode. This
+may now be called in rcu-walk mode (nd->flags & LOOKUP_RCU). -ECHILD should be
+returned if the filesystem cannot handle rcu-walk. See
+Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt for more details.