Subject: Re: [PATCH 4/5] 9p: Always update remote_i_size in stat2inode

From: Dominique Martinet <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2024 04:42:24 +0900

David Howells wrote on Wed, Jan 03, 2024 at 02:59:28PM +0000:
> Always update remote_i_size in v9fs_stat2inode*() if the size is available,
> even if we are asked not to update i_isize

Sorry -- hold on for this patch, let's drop it for now and take it more
slowly through next cycle.

I had mostly forgotten about V9FS_STAT2INODE_KEEP_ISIZE and not paying
enough attention yesterday evening, but it's not innocent -- I assume
netfs will do the right thing if we update the *remote* i_size when
there is cached data, but the inode's i_size cannot be updated as
easily.

It's hard to notice because the comment got split in 5e3cc1ee1405a7
("9p: use inode->i_lock to protect i_size_write() under 32-bit"), but
v9fs_refresh_inode* still have it:
        /*      
         * We don't want to refresh inode->i_size,
         * because we may have cached data
         */

I assume refreshing i_size at a bad time would act like a truncation
of cached memory.

(To answer the other thread's comment that v9fs_i_size_write is useless;
it's far from obvious enough but I'm afraid it is needed:
- include/linux/fs.h has a comment saying i_size_write does need locking
around it for 32bit to avoid breaking i_size_seqcount; that's still true
in today's tree.
- we could use any lock as long as it's coherent within the 9p
subsystem, but we don't need a whole mutex so i_lock it is.)
-- 
Dominique Martinet | Asmadeus