Re: [PATCH 4/5] ext4: fallocate support in ext4

Andreas Dilger
2007-05-07T19:49:44Z

On May 03, 2007 21:31 -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 23:43:32 +0530 "Amit K. Arora" <aarora@linux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote:
> > + * ext4_fallocate:
> > + * preallocate space for a file
> > + * mode is for future use, e.g. for unallocating preallocated blocks etc.
> > + */
>
> This description is rather thin. What is the filesystem's actual behaviour
> here? If the file is using extents then the implementation will do
> <something>. If the file is using bitmaps then we will do <something else>.
>
> But what? Here is where it should be described.

My understanding is that glibc will handle zero-filling of files for
filesystems that do not support fallocate().

> > +int ext4_fallocate(struct inode *inode, int mode, loff_t offset, loff_t len)
> > +{
> > + handle_t *handle;
> > + ext4_fsblk_t block, max_blocks;
> > + int ret, ret2, nblocks = 0, retries = 0;
> > + struct buffer_head map_bh;
> > + unsigned int credits, blkbits = inode->i_blkbits;
> > +
> > + /* Currently supporting (pre)allocate mode _only_ */
> > + if (mode != FA_ALLOCATE)
> > + return -EOPNOTSUPP;
> > +
> > + if (!(EXT4_I(inode)->i_flags & EXT4_EXTENTS_FL))
> > + return -ENOTTY;
>
> So we don't implement fallocate on bitmap-based files! Well that's huge
> news. The changelog would be an appropriate place to communicate this,
> along with reasons why, or a description of the plan to fix it.
>
> Also, posix says nothing about fallocate() returning ENOTTY.

I _think_ this is to convince glibc to do the zero-filling in userspace,
but I'm not up on the API specifics.

> > + block = offset >> blkbits;
> > + max_blocks = (EXT4_BLOCK_ALIGN(len + offset, blkbits) >> blkbits)
> > + - block;
> > + mutex_lock(&EXT4_I(inode)->truncate_mutex);
> > + credits = ext4_ext_calc_credits_for_insert(inode, NULL);
> > + mutex_unlock(&EXT4_I(inode)->truncate_mutex);
>
> Now I'm mystified. Given that we're allocating an arbitrary amount of disk
> space, and that this disk space will require an arbitrary amount of
> metadata, how can we work out how much journal space we'll be needing
> without at least looking at `len'?

Good question.

The uninitialized extent can cover up to 128MB with a single entry.
If @path isn't specified, then ext4_ext_calc_credits_for_insert()
function returns the maximum number of extents needed to insert a leaf,
including splitting all of the index blocks. That would allow up to 43GB
(340 extents/block * 128MB) to be preallocated, but it still needs to take
the size of the preallocation into account (adding 3 blocks per 43GB - a
leaf block, a bitmap block and a group descriptor).

Also, since @path is not being given then truncate_mutex is not needed.

> > + ret = ext4_ext_get_blocks(handle, inode, block,
> > + max_blocks, &map_bh,
> > + EXT4_CREATE_UNINITIALIZED_EXT, 0);
> > + BUG_ON(!ret);
>
> BUG_ON is vicious. Is it really justified here? Possibly a WARN_ON and
> ext4_error() would be safer and more useful here.

Ouch, not very friendly error handling.

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
Principal Software Engineer
Cluster File Systems, Inc.