Re: [PATCH] xfs:negative_icount.patch

[Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>]

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 01:53:41PM -0500, Stuart Brodsky wrote:
> This patch fixes the stat -f icount field going negative.

In what tool?  Do you means the Inodes: Total output in the stat(1) tool?

Please describe the problem in more detail in the commit log, and also
use a descriptive subject line.


> The use of
> lazy counts means that the super block field sb_icount is not updated
> correctly and will allow over allocation of inodes above maxicount.

The patch replaces the use of m_sb.sb_icount with your new atomic
variable in a few places in the inode allocator.  If it really was the
stat tool mentioned above I would expect xfs_fs_statfs to also be
updated to use it.  Either way I'm a bit confused about which users
are switched to the new variable and which not.  This probably needs
a good comment in the code explaining where to use it and where not.

And the commit message needs a comment explaining how this negative
icount actually happened.

Note that introducing a filesystem-global atomic variable generally
isn't a good thing for scalability.  This one is touched seldomly enough
that it might not a big problem, but depending on where you need to use
it summing up the per-cpu counters on demand might be a better option.

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