Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754045AbbG3IBo (ORCPT ); Thu, 30 Jul 2015 04:01:44 -0400 Received: from youngberry.canonical.com ([91.189.89.112]:44173 "EHLO youngberry.canonical.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750747AbbG3IBm (ORCPT ); Thu, 30 Jul 2015 04:01:42 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <20150729220829.GM3902@dastard> References: <1437061068-26118-1-git-send-email-ming.lei@canonical.com> <1437061068-26118-5-git-send-email-ming.lei@canonical.com> <20150727084020.GA28336@infradead.org> <20150727094530.GA15507@infradead.org> <20150727173331.GA17594@infradead.org> <20150729084102.GB16638@dastard> <20150729220829.GM3902@dastard> Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2015 04:01:39 -0400 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [PATCH v7 4/6] block: loop: prepare for supporing direct IO From: Ming Lei To: Dave Chinner Cc: Christoph Hellwig , Jens Axboe , Linux Kernel Mailing List , "Justin M. Forbes" , Jeff Moyer , Tejun Heo , linux-api@vger.kernel.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3839 Lines: 85 On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 6:08 PM, Dave Chinner wrote: > On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 07:21:47AM -0400, Ming Lei wrote: >> On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 4:41 AM, Dave Chinner wrote: >> > On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 03:33:52AM -0400, Ming Lei wrote: >> >> On Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 1:33 PM, Christoph Hellwig wrote: >> >> > On Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 05:53:33AM -0400, Ming Lei wrote: >> >> >> Because size has to be 4k aligned too. >> >> > >> >> > Yes. But again I don't see any reason to limit us to a hardcoded 512 >> >> > byte block size here, especially considering the patches to finally >> >> >> >> From loop block's view, the request size can be any count of 512-byte >> >> sectors, then the transfer size to backing device can't guarantee to be >> >> 4k aligned always. >> > >> > In theory, yes. In practise, doesn't happen very often. >> > >> >> > allow enabling other block sizes from userspace. >> >> >> >> I have some questions about the patchset, and looks the author doesn't >> >> reply it yet. >> >> >> >> On Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 6:06 PM, Dave Chinner wrote: >> >> >> Because size has to be 4k aligned too. >> >> > >> >> > So check that, too. Any >= 4k block size filesystem should be doing >> >> > mostly 4k aligned and sized IO... >> >> >> >> I guess you mean we only use direct IO for the 4k aligned and sized IO? >> >> If so, that won't be efficient because the page cache has to be flushed >> >> during the switch. >> > >> > It will be extremely rare for a 4k block size filesystem to do >> > anything other than 4k aligned and sized IO. Think about it for a >> > minute: what does the page cache do to unaligned IO patterns (i.e. >> > buffered IO)? It does IO in page sizes, and so if the application >> > if doing badly aligned or sized IO with buffered IO, then the >> > underlying device will only ever size page sized and aligned IO. >> > >> > Hence sector aligned IO will only come from applications doing >> > direct IO. If the application is doing direct IO and it's not >> > properly aligned, then it already is going to get sucky performance >> > because most filesystem serialise sub-block size direct IO because >> > concurrent sub-block IOs to the same block usually leads to data >> > corruption. >> >> The blocksize of filesysten over loop can be 512, 1024, 2048, and >> suppose sector size of backing device is 4096, then filesystem >> can see aligned direct IO when IO size/offset from application is aligned >> with fs block size, but loop still can't do direct IO for all this >> kind of requests >> against backing file. > > Sure, but again you're talking about a fairly rare configuration. > The vast majority of filesystems use 4k block sizes, just like the > vast majority of applications use buffered IO. Don't jump through > hoops to optimise a case that probably doesn't need optimising. Make > it work correctly first, then optimise performance later when > someone has a need for it to be really fast. OK, I will support 1024, 2048 and 4096 sector size in v8. > >> Another case is that application may access loop block directly, such >> as 'dd if=/dev/loopN', but it may not be common, and maybe it needn't >> to consider. > > 'dd if=/dev/loopN bs=4k....' > > Cheers, > > Dave. > -- > Dave Chinner > david@fromorbit.com > -- > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/