Re: [PATCH, 3.7-rc7, RESEND] fs: revert commit bbdd6808 to fallocate UAPI

Theodore Ts'o
2012-12-05T17:34:22Z

On Wed, Dec 05, 2012 at 06:24:05PM +0100, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> > Heck, I probably have more to complain about with the inode flags
> > field, which were originally created specifically for ext2/3/4, and
> > which has since been grabbed for use by other file systems, including
> > btrfs. You haven't heard me kvetching because btrfs has grabbed
> > btrfs-specific inode flags for nocow and notail... no one even bother
> > to try to get it past the fs-devel shed painting crew before *those*
> > bits were allocated --- and I am absolutely fine with that.
>
> Thats no technical reason – thats exactly the process / patch review stuff
> Linus does not seem to give a shit about at least with this topic.

Exactly; just as Dave's complaint is not technical.

> That aside I wondered about that inode flags in earlier days already. At
> some time chattr +i worked with XFS and then it only worked in Ext3.
> Before that I thought that chattr stuff would work with all filesystems.

Historically, they were created only for ext2/3/4 file systems. Over
time, other file systems have used it as a common interface. It's for
historical reasons that it's still an ioctl, as opposed to a system
call. For ext2/3/4 the inode flags is actually the on-disk encoding,
not just the userspace ABI. For other file systems, it might be just
the ABI, or it might also be something that they use for their on-disk
encoding.

Because it's the on-disk encoding, when btrfs uses extra bits for its
btrfs-specific inode flags, it means that I need to avoid using those
bits in ext4, if it's a flag that needs to also be exposed via
chattr/lsattr. That being said, you'll note that unlike Dave, I have
**not** thrown a hissy fit when btrfs grabbed bits from the inode
field, even though quite a bit more bits allocated for the inode flags
than the fallocate flags.

- Ted

P.S. The main reason why it would have been better for btrfs
developers to have consulted me is that they also depend on
lsattr/chattr, and those programs are part of e2fsprogs. Since no one
told me about the nocow flag when it first went into the kernel, I
didn't add it to e2fsprogs until relatively recently --- with the
result that Ubuntu Lucid doesnt have a version of chattr which
supports the nocow flag. (Not a big deal, I just have to convince
Canoncal to upgrade to a newer version of e2fsprogs.) So I only get
annoyed when some btrfs users complain about the lack of support in
chattr, when the main reason why there was no support at least at
first was no one bothered to ask me to add support; it was not because
I had anything against btrfs. As soon as I found out about the nocow
flag, I added support to chattr and lsattr and pushed out a new
release of e2fsprogs.
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