From: Matthew Wilcox Subject: Re: [PATCH] ext4: Return the length of a hole from get_block Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2015 09:48:51 -0400 Message-ID: <20150714134851.GK13681@linux.intel.com> References: <1435936511-17705-1-git-send-email-matthew.r.wilcox@intel.com> <20150713151610.GC17075@quack.suse.cz> <20150713152615.GH13681@linux.intel.com> <20150714090246.GA24369@quack.suse.cz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Matthew Wilcox , Theodore Ts'o , Andreas Dilger , linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org To: Jan Kara Return-path: Received: from mga02.intel.com ([134.134.136.20]:33512 "EHLO mga02.intel.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750833AbbGNNtH (ORCPT ); Tue, 14 Jul 2015 09:49:07 -0400 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20150714090246.GA24369@quack.suse.cz> Sender: linux-ext4-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 11:02:46AM +0200, Jan Kara wrote: > On Mon 13-07-15 11:26:15, Matthew Wilcox wrote: > > On Mon, Jul 13, 2015 at 05:16:10PM +0200, Jan Kara wrote: > > > On Fri 03-07-15 11:15:11, Matthew Wilcox wrote: > > > > From: Matthew Wilcox > > > > > > > > Currently, if ext4's get_block encounters a hole, it does not modify the > > > > buffer_head. That's fine for many callers, but for DAX, it's useful to > > > > know how large the hole is. XFS already returns the length of the hole, > > > > so this improvement should not confuse any callers. > > > > > > > > Signed-off-by: Matthew Wilcox > > > > > > So I'm somewhat wondering: What is the reason of BH_Uptodate flag being > > > set? I can see the XFS sets it in some cases as well but the use of the > > > flag isn't really clear to me... > > > > No clue. I'm just following the documentation in buffer.c: > > > > * NOTE! All mapped/uptodate combinations are valid: > > * > > * Mapped Uptodate Meaning > > * > > * No No "unknown" - must do get_block() > > * No Yes "hole" - zero-filled > > * Yes No "allocated" - allocated on disk, not read in > > * Yes Yes "valid" - allocated and up-to-date in memory. > > OK, but that speaks about buffer head attached to a page. get_block() > callback gets a temporary bh (at least in some cases) only so that it can > communicate result of block mapping. And BH_Uptodate should be set only if > data in the buffer is properly filled (which cannot be the case for > temporary bh which doesn't have *any* data) and it simply isn't the case > even for bh attached to a page because ext4 get_block() functions don't > touch bh->b_data at all. So I just wouldn't set BH_Uptodate in get_block() > at all.. OK, but how should DAX then distinguish between an old-style filesystem (like current ext4) which reports "unknown" and leaves b_size untouched when it encounters a hole, versus a new-style filesystem (XFS, ext4 with this patch) which wants to report the size of a hole in b_size? The use of Uptodate currently distinguishes the two cases. Plus, why would you want bh's to be treated differently, depending on whether they're stack-based or attached to a page? That seems even more confusing than bh's already are.