[linux-cifs-client] readpages (not just writepages) needs work

[Steven French]

I was looking at cifs to windows ME interop again last night.  Working
through read test cases to it I noticed that cifs_readpages needs work, not
just minor restructuring to make the code clearer and easier to understand,
and not just work to enable async dispatching of read request (like what
James Roper had started working on previously) but to change a fundamental
assumption of that code.  There is an assumption in the cifs_readpages code
that the server can at least support reading one page (which is not an
assumption in cifs_readpage/cifs_read) which is not the case for windows me
(which supports just over 2k read sizes).    This is not a problem to any
halfway recent server nor is a big problem in the short term since we could
force mounts to these servers to use cifs_readpage by taking out the
function pointer to readpages for inodes off that mount, but I think it is
time to rewrite this code (presumably much useful code in real life gets
rewritten multiple times).

Since the one the local filesystems use - block readpages (mpage_readpages)
is not a very good example (although it is perhaps the only example), this
requires some care - so any help would be appreciated and I will be happy
to take suggestions on the rewrite of this section.


Steve French
Senior Software Engineer
Linux Technology Center - IBM Austin
phone: 512-838-2294
email: sfrench at-sign us dot ibm dot com
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