Re: [patch 4/8] mm: write_cache_pages type overflow fix

[Steven Whitehouse <steve@chygwyn.com>]

Hi,

On Fri, 2008-10-10 at 09:37 -0400, Theodore Tso wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 09:13:25AM -0400, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 09:10:30AM -0400, Theodore Tso wrote:
> > > > Aneesh has a patch to kill the range_cont flag, which is queued up for
> > > > 2.6.28.
> > > 
> > > Which tree is this queued up in?  It's not in ext4 or the mm tree...
> > 
> > Oh, it' not queued up yet?  It's part of the patch that switches ext4
> > to it's own copy of write_cache_pages to fix the buffer write issues.
> > 
> 
> I held off queing it up since the version Aneesh did created ext4's
> own copy of write_cache_pages, and given that Nick has a bunch of
> fixes and improvements for write_cache_pages, it confirmed my fears
> that queueing a patch which copied ~100 lines of code into ext4 was
> probably not the best way to go.
> 
I've not looked at ext4's copy of write_cache_pages, but there is also a
copy in GFS2. Its used only for journaled data, and it is pretty much a
direct copy of write_cache_pages except that its split into two so that
a transaction can be opened in the "middle".

Perhaps it would be possible to make some changes so that we can both
share the "core" version of write_cache_pages. My plan was to wait until
Nick's patches have made it to Linus, and then to look into what might
be done,

Steve.