@@ -1443,3 +1443,310 @@ This step is critical for enabling system administrator to monitor the status
of the filesystem and the progress of any repairs.
For developers, it is a useful means to judge the efficacy of error detection
and correction in the online and offline checking tools.
+
+Eventual Consistency vs. Online Fsck
+------------------------------------
+
+Midway through the development of online scrubbing, the fsstress tests
+uncovered a misinteraction between online fsck and compound transaction chains
+created by other writer threads that resulted in false reports of metadata
+inconsistency.
+The root cause of these reports is the eventual consistency model introduced by
+the expansion of deferred work items and compound transaction chains when
+reverse mapping and reflink were introduced.
+
+Originally, transaction chains were added to XFS to avoid deadlocks when
+unmapping space from files.
+Deadlock avoidance rules require that AGs only be locked in increasing order,
+which makes it impossible (say) to use a single transaction to free a space
+extent in AG 7 and then try to free a now superfluous block mapping btree block
+in AG 3.
+To avoid these kinds of deadlocks, XFS creates Extent Freeing Intent (EFI) log
+items to commit to freeing some space in one transaction while deferring the
+actual metadata updates to a fresh transaction.
+The transaction sequence looks like this:
+
+1. The first transaction contains a physical update to the file's block mapping
+ structures to remove the mapping from the btree blocks.
+ It then attaches to the in-memory transaction an action item to schedule
+ deferred freeing of space.
+ Concretely, each transaction maintains a list of ``struct
+ xfs_defer_pending`` objects, each of which maintains a list of ``struct
+ xfs_extent_free_item`` objects.
+ Returning to the example above, the action item tracks the freeing of both
+ the unmapped space from AG 7 and the block mapping btree (BMBT) block from
+ AG 3.
+ Deferred frees recorded in this manner are committed in the log by creating
+ an EFI log item from the ``struct xfs_extent_free_item`` object and
+ attaching the log item to the transaction.
+ When the log is persisted to disk, the EFI item is written into the ondisk
+ transaction record.
+ EFIs can list up to 16 extents to free, all sorted in AG order.
+
+2. The second transaction contains a physical update to the free space btrees
+ of AG 3 to release the former BMBT block and a second physical update to the
+ free space btrees of AG 7 to release the unmapped file space.
+ Observe that the the physical updates are resequenced in the correct order
+ when possible.
+ Attached to the transaction is a an extent free done (EFD) log item.
+ The EFD contains a pointer to the EFI logged in transaction #1 so that log
+ recovery can tell if the EFI needs to be replayed.
+
+If the system goes down after transaction #1 is written back to the filesystem
+but before #2 is committed, a scan of the filesystem metadata would show
+inconsistent filesystem metadata because there would not appear to be any owner
+of the unmapped space.
+Happily, log recovery corrects this inconsistency for us -- when recovery finds
+an intent log item but does not find a corresponding intent done item, it will
+reconstruct the incore state of the intent item and finish it.
+In the example above, the log must replay both frees described in the recovered
+EFI to complete the recovery phase.
+
+There are two subtleties to XFS' transaction chaining strategy to consider.
+The first is that log items must be added to a transaction in the correct order
+to prevent conflicts with principal objects that are not held by the
+transaction.
+In other words, all per-AG metadata updates for an unmapped block must be
+completed before the last update to free the extent, and extents should not
+be reallocated until that last update commits to the log.
+The second subtlety comes from the fact that AG header buffers are (usually)
+released between each transaction in a chain.
+This means that other threads can observe an AG in an intermediate state,
+but as long as the first subtlety is handled, this should not affect the
+correctness of filesystem operations.
+Unmounting the filesystem flushes all pending work to disk, which means that
+offline fsck never sees the temporary inconsistencies caused by deferred work
+item processing.
+In this manner, XFS employs a form of eventual consistency to avoid deadlocks
+and increase parallelism.
+
+During the design phase of the reverse mapping and reflink features, it was
+decided that it was impractical to cram all the reverse mapping updates for a
+single filesystem change into a single transaction because a single file
+mapping operation can explode into many small updates:
+
+* The block mapping update itself
+* A reverse mapping update for the block mapping update
+* Fixing the freelist
+* A reverse mapping update for the freelist fix
+
+* A shape change to the block mapping btree
+* A reverse mapping update for the btree update
+* Fixing the freelist (again)
+* A reverse mapping update for the freelist fix
+
+* An update to the reference counting information
+* A reverse mapping update for the refcount update
+* Fixing the freelist (a third time)
+* A reverse mapping update for the freelist fix
+
+* Freeing any space that was unmapped and not owned by any other file
+* Fixing the freelist (a fourth time)
+* A reverse mapping update for the freelist fix
+
+* Freeing the space used by the block mapping btree
+* Fixing the freelist (a fifth time)
+* A reverse mapping update for the freelist fix
+
+Free list fixups are not usually needed more than once per AG per transaction
+chain, but it is theoretically possible if space is very tight.
+For copy-on-write updates this is even worse, because this must be done once to
+remove the space from a staging area and again to map it into the file!
+
+To deal with this explosion in a calm manner, XFS expands its use of deferred
+work items to cover most reverse mapping updates and all refcount updates.
+This reduces the worst case size of transaction reservations by breaking the
+work into a long chain of small updates, which increases the degree of eventual
+consistency in the system.
+Again, this generally isn't a problem because XFS orders its deferred work
+items carefully to avoid resource reuse conflicts between unsuspecting threads.
+
+However, online fsck changes the rules -- remember that although physical
+updates to per-AG structures are coordinated by locking the buffers for AG
+headers, buffer locks are dropped between transactions.
+Once scrub acquires resources and takes locks for a data structure, it must do
+all the validation work without releasing the lock.
+If the main lock for a space btree is an AG header buffer lock, scrub may have
+interrupted another thread that is midway through finishing a chain.
+For example, if a thread performing a copy-on-write has completed a reverse
+mapping update but not the corresponding refcount update, the two AG btrees
+will appear inconsistent to scrub and an observation of corruption will be
+recorded. This observation will not be correct.
+If a repair is attempted in this state, the results will be catastrophic!
+
+Several solutions to this problem were evaluated upon discovery of this flaw:
+
+1. Add a higher level lock to allocation groups and require writer threads to
+ acquire the higher level lock in AG order before making any changes.
+ This would be very difficult to implement in practice because it is
+ difficult to determine which locks need to be obtained, and in what order,
+ without simulating the entire operation.
+ Performing a dry run of a file operation to discover necessary locks would
+ make the filesystem very slow.
+
+2. Make the deferred work coordinator code aware of consecutive intent items
+ targeting the same AG and have it hold the AG header buffers locked across
+ the transaction roll between updates.
+ This would introduce a lot of complexity into the coordinator since it is
+ only loosely coupled with the actual deferred work items.
+ It would also fail to solve the problem because deferred work items can
+ generate new deferred subtasks, but all subtasks must be complete before
+ work can start on a new sibling task.
+
+3. Teach online fsck to walk all transactions waiting for whichever lock(s)
+ protect the data structure being scrubbed to look for pending operations.
+ The checking and repair operations must factor these pending operations into
+ the evaluations being performed.
+ This solution is a nonstarter because it is *extremely* invasive to the main
+ filesystem.
+
+4. Recognize that only online fsck has this requirement of total consistency
+ of AG metadata, and that online fsck should be relatively rare as compared
+ to filesystem change operations.
+ For each AG, maintain a sloppy count of intent items targetting that AG.
+ When online fsck wants to examine an AG, it should lock the AG header
+ buffers to quiesce all transaction chains that want to modify that AG, and
+ only proceed with the scrub if the count is zero.
+ In other words, scrub only proceeds if it can lock the AG header buffers and
+ there can't possibly be any intents in progress.
+ This may lead to fairness and starvation issues, but regular filesystem
+ updates take precedence over online fsck activity.
+
+Intent Drains
+`````````````
+
+The fourth solution is implemented in the current iteration of online fsck,
+with percpu counters providing the "sloppy" counter.
+Updates to the percpu counter from normal writer threads are very fast, which
+is good for maintaining runtime performance.
+
+There are two key properties to the drain mechanism.
+First, the counter is incremented when a deferred work item is *queued* to a
+transaction, and it is decremented after the associated intent done log item is
+*committed* to another transaction.
+The second property is that deferred work can be added to a transaction without
+holding an AG header lock, but per-AG work items cannot be marked done without
+locking that AG header buffer to log the physical updates and the intent done
+log item.
+The first property enables scrub to yield to running transaction chains, which
+is an explicit deprioritization of online fsck to benefit file operations.
+The second property of the drain is key to the correct coordination of scrub,
+since scrub will always be able to decide if a conflict is possible.
+
+For regular filesystem code, the drain works as follows:
+
+1. Add a deferred item to a transaction.
+
+2. The deferred item manager calls the ``->add_item`` method of the item.
+
+3. The ``->add_item`` implementation calls ``xfs_drain_bump`` to increase the
+ sloppy counter.
+
+4. When the deferred item manager wants to finish the defeferred work, it calls
+ ``->finish_item`` to complete it.
+
+5. The ``->finish_item`` implementation logs some changes and calls
+ ``xfs_drain_drop`` to decrease the sloppy counter and wake up any threads
+ waiting on the drain.
+
+6. The subtransaction commits, which unlocks the resource associated with the
+ intent item.
+
+For scrub, the drain works as follows:
+
+1. Lock the resource(s) associated with the metadata being scrubbed.
+ For example, a scan of the refcount btree would lock the AGI and AGF header
+ buffers.
+
+2. If the sloppy counter is zero (``xfs_drain_busy`` returns false), there are
+ no chains in progress and the operation may proceed.
+
+3. Otherwise, release the resources grabbed in step 1.
+
+4. Wait for the intent counter to reach zero (``xfs_drain_intents``), then go
+ back to step 1 unless a signal has been caught.
+
+To avoid polling in step 4, the drain provides a waitqueue for scrub threads to
+be woken up whenever the intent count drops.
+
+The proposed patchset is the
+`scrub intent drain series
+<https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/djwong/xfs-linux.git/log/?h=scrub-drain-intents>`_.
+
+.. _jump_labels:
+
+Static Keys (aka Jump Label Patching)
+`````````````````````````````````````
+
+Online fsck for XFS separates the regular filesystem from the checking and
+repair code as much as possible.
+However, there are a few parts of online fsck (such as the intent drains, and
+later, live update hooks) where it is useful for the online fsck code to know
+what's going on in the rest of the filesystem.
+Since it is not expected that online fsck will be constantly running in the
+background, it is very important to minimize the runtime overhead imposed by
+these hooks when online fsck is compiled into the kernel but not actively
+running on behalf of userspace.
+Taking locks in the hot path of a writer thread to access a data structure only
+to find that no further action is necessary is expensive -- on the author's
+computer, this have an overhead of 40-50ns per access.
+Fortunately, the kernel supports dynamic code patching, which enables XFS to
+replace a static branch to hook code with ``nop`` sleds when online fsck isn't
+running.
+This sled has an overhead of however long it takes the instruction decoder to
+skip past the sled, which seems to be on the order of less than 1ns and
+does not access memory outside of instruction fetching.
+
+When online fsck enables the static key, the sled is replaced with an
+unconditional branch to call the hook code.
+The switchover is quite expensive (~22000ns) but is paid entirely by the
+program that invoked online fsck, and can be amortized if multiple threads
+enter online fsck at the same time, or if multiple filesystems are being
+checked at the same time.
+Changing the branch direction requires taking the CPU hotplug lock, and since
+CPU initialization requires memory allocation, online fsck must be careful not
+to change a static key while holding any locks or resources that could be
+accessed in the memory reclaim paths.
+To minimize contention on the CPU hotplug lock, care should be taken not to
+enable or disable static keys unnecessarily.
+
+Because static keys are intended to minimize hook overhead for regular
+filesystem operations when xfs_scrub is not running, the intended usage
+patterns are as follows:
+
+- The hooked part of XFS should declare a static-scoped static key that
+ defaults to false.
+ The ``DEFINE_STATIC_KEY_FALSE`` macro takes care of this.
+ The static key itself should be declared as a ``static`` variable.
+
+- When deciding to invoke code that's only used by scrub, the regular
+ filesystem should call the ``static_branch_unlikely`` predicate to avoid the
+ scrub-only hook code if the static key is not enabled.
+
+- The regular filesystem should export helper functions that call
+ ``static_branch_inc`` to enable and ``static_branch_dec`` to disable the
+ static key.
+ Wrapper functions make it easy to compile out the relevant code if the kernel
+ distributor turns off online fsck at build time.
+
+- Scrub functions wanting to turn on scrub-only XFS functionality should call
+ the ``xchk_fshooks_enable`` from the setup function to enable a specific
+ hook.
+ This must be done before obtaining any resources that are used by memory
+ reclaim.
+ Callers had better be sure they really need the functionality gated by the
+ static key; the ``TRY_HARDER`` flag is useful here.
+
+Online scrub has resource acquisition helpers (e.g. ``xchk_perag_lock``) to
+handle locking AGI and AGF buffers for all scrubber functions.
+If it detects a conflict between scrub and the running transactions, it will
+try to wait for intents to complete.
+If the caller of the helper has not enabled the static key, the helper will
+return -EDEADLOCK, which should result in the scrub being restarted with the
+``TRY_HARDER`` flag set.
+The scrub setup function should detect that flag, enable the static key, and
+try the scrub again.
+Scrub teardown disables all static keys obtained by ``xchk_fshooks_enable``.
+
+For more information, please see the kernel documentation of
+Documentation/staging/static-keys.rst.