Subject: Re: [PATCH][RFC] fast file mapping for loop
From: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
To: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>,
       Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
       chris.mason@oracle.com, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org
In-Reply-To: <20080110094941.GV6258@kernel.dk>
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	 <200801101242.25671.nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
	 <20080110083753.GB10745@infradead.org> <1199957821.29498.2.camel@twins>
	 <20080110094941.GV6258@kernel.dk>
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Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 10:52:51 +0100
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On Thu, 2008-01-10 at 10:49 +0100, Jens Axboe wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 10 2008, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > 
> > On Thu, 2008-01-10 at 08:37 +0000, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > 
> > > Peter, any chance you could chime in here?
> > 
> > I have this patch to add swap_out/_in methods. I expect we can loosen
> > the requirement for swapcache pages and change the name a little.
> > 
> > previously posted here:
> >   http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/4/143
> > 
> > --- 
> > Subject: mm: add support for non block device backed swap files
> > 
> > New addres_space_operations methods are added:
> >   int swapfile(struct address_space *, int);
> >   int swap_out(struct file *, struct page *, struct writeback_control *);
> >   int swap_in(struct file *, struct page *);
> > 
> > When during sys_swapon() the swapfile() method is found and returns no error
> > the swapper_space.a_ops will proxy to sis->swap_file->f_mapping->a_ops, and
> > make use of swap_{out,in}() to write/read swapcache pages.
> > 
> > The swapfile method will be used to communicate to the address_space that the
> > VM relies on it, and the address_space should take adequate measures (like 
> > reserving memory for mempools or the like).
> > 
> > This new interface can be used to obviate the need for ->bmap in the swapfile
> > code. A filesystem would need to load (and maybe even allocate) the full block
> > map for a file into memory and pin it there on ->swapfile(,1) so that
> > ->swap_{out,in}() have instant access to it. It can be released on
> > ->swapfile(,0).
> 
> So this is where I don't think that's good enough, you cannot require a
> full block/extent mapping of a file on setup. It can take quite some
> time, a little testing I did here easily took 5 seconds for only a
> couple of gigabytes. And that wasn't even worst case for that size. It
> also wastes memory by populating extents that we may never read or
> write.
> 
> If you look at the loop addition I did, it populates lazily as needed
> with some very simple logic to populate-ahead. In practice that performs
> as well as a pre-populated map, the first IO to a given range will just
> be a little slower since we have to bmap() it.
> 
> Do you have plans to improve this area?

Nope, for swap it _must_ be there, there is just no way we can do block
allocation on swapout.

That said, the swapfile() interface can be used to pre-populate the
extend/block mapping, and when using swap_(in/out) without it, it can be
done lazily.


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