From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Kent Overstreet Subject: Re: bcachefs: can bcachefs export block devices? Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2016 22:08:46 -0800 Message-ID: <20160804060846.GB8042@kmo-pixel> References: <20160525225113.GA20180@kmo-pixel> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Received: from mail-pf0-f174.google.com ([209.85.192.174]:33612 "EHLO mail-pf0-f174.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750710AbcHDHKJ (ORCPT ); Thu, 4 Aug 2016 03:10:09 -0400 Received: by mail-pf0-f174.google.com with SMTP id y134so84705947pfg.0 for ; Thu, 04 Aug 2016 00:10:09 -0700 (PDT) Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-bcache-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-bcache@vger.kernel.org To: Eric Wheeler Cc: linux-bcache@vger.kernel.org On Fri, May 27, 2016 at 07:45:32PM -0700, Eric Wheeler wrote: > > On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 02:47:29PM -0700, Eric Wheeler wrote: > > > Does bcachefs's implementation reuse and update the existing > > > bcache code such that the block device driver inherits the bcachefs > > > improvements? I understand the cache superblock changed, maybe the cached > > > dev super too. > > > > Yes, all of the existing functionality is still there (though some of it's > > broken at the moment because I haven't been running those tests; if you're > > interested in using bcache-dev for the old style caching (there are performance > > and robustness improvements) it wouldn't take me long to get it working again). > > I can test that once its working. Would it use the same bcachefs tools > for formatting superblocks? > > Relatedly, can you point out the best place to abstract cachemeta-v1 vs. > cachemeta-v2 for simultaneous use? Could it be just a bunch of function > pointers in the cachedev struct and assignment during initialization for > v1/v2? Have the call arguments changed? What functions would need > abstractions (the smallest v1/v2 intersection)? You mean compile a kernel that supports both old and new on disk format? Realistically the only way that's going to happen is to completely fork the source code, ext2/3/4 style. Although that's going to have to happen eventually. > > > Can bcachefs provide /dev/bcacheN devices without loop.ko? > > > > > > If so, are these simply filesystem objects (files)? > > > > The way it works is the first 4096 inode numbers are owned by the block device > > interface - inodes in that range are for either cached devices or thin > > provisioned volumes. The filesystem code owns inode numbers >= 4096. > > > > So while blockdev volumes/cached data do have inodes, they're not reachable via > > the filesystem because there will never be dirents that point to them (also, > > they use a different inode type with extra fields for the UUID/label). > > Thats a neat implementation. Would creating a dirent for such an inode > expose the block device with the same size and content (and ordering) if > if the inode were compatable? Would the blockdev be block-size aligned > versus the file or might the file have an alignment requirement? What we'd want to do is add an ioctl or something to take a fs inode (a normal file, that already has a dirent) and create at runtime a block device for it. > I'm particularly excited about this as a precursor to snapshot support, > especially if udev could help produce something like this: > > /dev/disk/by-path/bcache-mydiskfile -> /dev/bcacheN > /dev/disk/by-path/bcache-mydisksnap -> /dev/bcacheN+1 Not sure what you mean by precursor - that would still require essentially the entire snapshots implementation. But yes, once we have snapshots we could do that too.