Re: [PATCH RFC v2] btrfs: disable direct reads to avoid dirty folios without fs knowing

Qu Wenruo <[email protected]> Thu, 23 Jul 2026 16:29:25 +0930
Newsgroups org.kernel.vger.linux-btrfs
Message-ID <[email protected]>

在 2026/7/23 16:18, Christian Borntraeger 写道:
> Am 23.07.26 um 08:13 schrieb Qu Wenruo:
>> There is a bug report that a reproducer which doing the following
>> workloads in two threads:
>>
>> - Direct read into memory mapped from page cache
>> - Sync the above range
>>
>> This can lead to dirty folios without fs knowing, this can be a huge
>> problem for btrfs, as even on the very basic bs == ps cases without
>> large folios, such reproducer can screw up the ordered extent accounting
>> already:
>>
>>   ------------[ cut here ]------------
>>   WARNING: fs/btrfs/ordered-data.c:390 at 
>> can_finish_ordered_extent.isra.0+0x56/0x1f0 [btrfs], CPU#1: kworker/ 
>> u42:0/68
>>   CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 68 Comm: kworker/u42:0 Tainted: G            
>> E       7.2.0-rc4-custom+ #415 PREEMPT(full)  
>> 74dbeafab12c410178747d5bec9fb200ae56949f
>>   Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS unknown 
>> 02/02/2022
>>   Workqueue: btrfs-endio simple_end_io_work [btrfs]
>>   RIP: 0010:can_finish_ordered_extent.isra.0+0x56/0x1f0 [btrfs]
>>   Call Trace:
>>    <TASK>
>>    btrfs_finish_ordered_extent+0x39/0xd0 [btrfs 
>> 7d1ffd99bb9696179883f257e5fd838e2d1a0ca3]
>>    end_bbio_data_write+0x1ff/0x280 [btrfs 
>> 7d1ffd99bb9696179883f257e5fd838e2d1a0ca3]
>>    btrfs_bio_end_io+0x76/0xf0 [btrfs 
>> 7d1ffd99bb9696179883f257e5fd838e2d1a0ca3]
>>    process_one_work+0x198/0x380
>>    worker_thread+0x1c8/0x330
>>    kthread+0xee/0x120
>>    ret_from_fork+0x28f/0x310
>>    ret_from_fork_asm+0x11/0x20
>>    </TASK>
>>   ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---
>>   BTRFS critical (device dm-3): bad ordered extent accounting, root=5 
>> ino=257 OE offset=3465216 OE len=2826240 to_dec=319488 left=135168
>>
>> Unfortunately we have removed cow fixup mechanism, which is to work
>> around such dirty folios by re-dirtying them and reserve space for them,
>> across several kernel releases, meaning we can not easily revert a
>> single commit to bring it back.
>> And without doubt, that old cow fixup mechanism is not support larger
>> folios.
>>
>> As a hot fix, disable btrfs direct reads for non-experimental builds for
>> now, so this can buy some time before we find out a proper way to address
>> this.
>>
>> Reported-by: Christian Borntraeger <[email protected]>
>> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-btrfs/f12f70e5-d84d-4a9f- 
>> [email protected]/
>> Signed-off-by: Qu Wenruo <[email protected]>
> 
> 
> Wow that is a big hammer. Doesnt that break typical usecases (like 
> databases on a file,
> qemu/kvm aio+direct image files etc)?

It falls back to buffered read, which has a good side effect that if the 
reader is also modifying the buffer, it will not cause a csum mismatch 
warning.

Although it causes huge performance drop.

> 
> Even worse, this does not fix the other GUP use cases that still exist? 
> So its only
> a partial fix. Have you considered to add my RFC patch on top to close 
> another
> problem that I can reproduce easily.

Because that doesn't fix the problem at all.
It's just masking a corner error.

With or without your RFC, on x86_64 with large folios disable 
intentionally, it still triggers the OE accounting problem mentioned in 
the commit message.

I believe if you switch an older kernel, or disable large folios 
manually (reverting commit 9bce95edb1b4d2802de9273b5170bfcff3090d24), 
then you should hit the same warning on s390x, and also fail the 
reproducer (error out, not hang though).


Again, dirty folios without fs knowing is the root cause, your RFC is 
only avoiding one symptom, all the other problems are still not 
addressed, and those problems are not any less serious than the hang.

Thanks,
Qu