Re: [PATCH 1/1] xfs: log the inode in ->write_inode calls for kupdate

Christoph Hellwig
2011-12-28T21:39:51Z

On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 10:35:56PM +0100, Hans-Peter Jansen wrote:
> On Sunday 18 December 2011, 16:49:55 Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > If the writeback code writes back an inode because it has expired we
> > currently use the non-blockin ->write_inode path. This means any
> > inode that is pinned is skipped. With delayed logging and a workload
> > that has very little log traffic otherwise it is very likely that an
> > inode that gets constantly written to is always pinned, and thus we
> > keep refusing to write it. The VM writeback code at that point
> > redirties it and doesn't try to write it again for another 30
> > seconds. This means under certain scenarious time based metadata
> > writeback never happens.
>
> Wouldn't this qualify as STABLE material then?

Yes, it does. But for something as complicated as XFS I'm not going to
do a simple Cc: to stable but will apply each patch individually and do
explicit testing of the backport.