Re: [External] Re: [PATCH 1/2] ext4: use ext4_ext_remove_space() for fast commit replay delete range

[Ritesh Harjani <riteshh@linux.ibm.com>]

On 22/02/04 12:36PM, Jan Kara wrote:
> On Fri 04-02-22 02:44:16, Ritesh Harjani wrote:
> > Ok, so I now know why the inode->i_size is 0 during replay phase (for file foo).
> > This is because inode->i_disksize is not really updated until after the
> > ext4_writepages() kicks in, which in this case, won't happen (for file foo)
> > when we are doing fsync on file bar. And hence fsync on file bar won't also
> > not ensure the delalloc blocks for file foo get's written out.
> >
> > In fact this above information was something that I was assuming it all
> > wrong.  Earlier I was of the opinion that fast_commit still pushes _all_
> > the dirty pagecache data of other files to disk too (which is incorrect)
> > and the only performance gains happens via less writes to disk (since we
> > write less metadata on disk).
> >
> > But I think what really happens is - In case of fast_commit when fsync is
> > called on any file (say bar), apart from that file's (bar) dirty data, it
> > only writes the necessary required metadata information of the blocks of
> > others files (in this case file foo) which are already allocated.  (which
> > in this case was due to fzero operation).  It does not actually allocate
> > the delalloc blocks due to buffered writes of any other file (other than
> > for file on which fsync is called).
>
> Yes, but that is exactly what also happens for normal commit. I.e. even
> without fastcommits, if we fsync(2), we will flush out data for that file
> but for all the other files, buffered data still stays in delalloc state in
> the page cache. Following journal commit will thus write all metadata (and
> wait for data) of the fsynced files but not for any other file that has
> only delalloc blocks. If writeback of some other file also happened before
> we commit, then yes, we include all the changes to the commit as well.
>
> > This happens in
> > ext4_fc_perform_commit() -> ext4_fc_submit_inode_data_all() ->
> > jbd2_submit_inode_data -> jbd2_journal_submit_inode_data_buffers() ->
> > generic_writepages() -> using writepage() which won't do block allocation for
> > delalloc blocks.
> >
> > So that above is what should give the major performance boost with fast_commit
> > in case of multiple file writes doing fsync. :)
> >
> > @Jan/Harshad - could you please confirm if above is correct?
>
> What you describe is correct but not special to fastcommit. As I mentioned
> on the call yesterday, fastcommit is currently beneficial only because the
> logical logging it does ends up writing much less blocks to the journal.
>

Yes, thanks for taking time to explain it again.
I got this now.

Thanks!
-ritesh


> 								Honza
> --
> Jan Kara <jack@suse.com>
> SUSE Labs, CR