From: Peter Zijlstra Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/2] new API to allocate buffer-cache for superblock in non-movable area Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 09:30:05 +0200 Message-ID: <20140722073005.GT3935@laptop> References: <53CDF437.4090306@lge.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Alexander Viro , Andrew Morton , "Paul E. McKenney" , Jan Kara , linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Theodore Ts'o , Andreas Dilger , linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org To: Gioh Kim Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <53CDF437.4090306@lge.com> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-ext4.vger.kernel.org On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 02:18:47PM +0900, Gioh Kim wrote: > Hello, > > This patch try to solve problem that a long-lasting page cache of > ext4 superblock disturbs page migration. > > I've been testing CMA feature on my ARM-based platform > and found some pages for page caches cannot be migrated. > Some of them are page caches of superblock of ext4 filesystem. > > Current ext4 reads superblock with sb_bread(). sb_bread() allocates page > from movable area. But the problem is that ext4 hold the page until > it is unmounted. If root filesystem is ext4 the page cannot be migrated forever. > > I introduce a new API for allocating page from non-movable area. > It is useful for ext4 and others that want to hold page cache for a long time. There's no word on why you can't teach ext4 to still migrate that page. For all I know it might be impossible, but at least mention why.