From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ted Ts'o Subject: Re: [PATCH] ext4: Adjust trim start with first_data_block. Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2011 00:40:12 -0500 Message-ID: <20110204054012.GD2623@thunk.org> References: <1295618707-3677-1-git-send-email-tm@tao.ma> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org, Lukas Czerner To: Tao Ma Return-path: Received: from li9-11.members.linode.com ([67.18.176.11]:48261 "EHLO test.thunk.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750790Ab1BDFkR (ORCPT ); Fri, 4 Feb 2011 00:40:17 -0500 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <1295618707-3677-1-git-send-email-tm@tao.ma> Sender: linux-ext4-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 10:05:07PM +0800, Tao Ma wrote: > From: Tao Ma > > As we have make the consense in the e-mail[1], the trim start should > be added with first_data_block. So this patch fulfill it and remove > the check for start < first_data_block. > > [1] http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-ext4/msg22737.html > Sorry, I was away at Linux.conf.au and didn't have a chance to respond this. Fundamentally I think we need to understand what the arguments to the trim ioctl is supposed to *mean*. Are they supposed to be physical block numbers, or some thing else? If we just bump everything by the first_data_block, (which is non-zero only for the 1k case), that will screw up the length argument, because the userspace program isn't going to know that (a) the file system is using 1k blocks, and (b) on ext2/3/4 that means that first_data_block is 1. So instead of saying that the arguments to trim mean "the data blocks" --- which is a concept that doesn't really have any meaning to the caller of the trim ioctl, without forcing it to know a lot more about the physical layout of filesystems, I think the argument to trim should be the physical block numbers. And just as we don't trim blocks that contain data that should be saved, we should just simply not trim block #0 (the boot block) and and block #1 (the superblock) on 1k block filesystems, and not trim block #0 (the boot block as well as the superblock) on 4k block filesystems. But we shouldn't be doing this by taking block number passed to trim and just adding first_data_block to it. I know a patch to do that has already merged into ext3, but with the indulgence of the folks on linux-ext4, could we reopen this question? Thanks, - Ted