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/drivers/staging/pohmelfs/inode.c b/drivers/staging/pohmelfs/inode.c
index 61685ccceda8..cc8d2840f9b6 100644
--- a/drivers/staging/pohmelfs/inode.c
+++ b/drivers/staging/pohmelfs/inode.c
@@ -826,6 +826,13 @@ const struct address_space_operations pohmelfs_aops = {
 	.set_page_dirty 	= __set_page_dirty_nobuffers,
 };
 
+static void pohmelfs_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(pohmelfs_inode_cache, POHMELFS_I(inode));
+}
+
 /*
  * ->detroy_inode() callback. Deletes inode from the caches
  *  and frees private data.
@@ -842,8 +849,8 @@ static void pohmelfs_destroy_inode(struct inode *inode)
 
 	dprintk("%s: pi: %p, inode: %p, ino: %llu.\n",
 		__func__, pi, &pi->vfs_inode, pi->ino);
-	kmem_cache_free(pohmelfs_inode_cache, pi);
 	atomic_long_dec(&psb->total_inodes);
+	call_rcu(&inode->i_rcu, pohmelfs_i_callback);
 }
 
 /*