Re: [PATCH 10/13] xfs: try worst case space reservation upfront in xfs_reflink_remap_extent

Christoph Hellwig
2021-01-28T09:56:20Z

On Wed, Jan 27, 2021 at 10:02:01PM -0800, Darrick J. Wong wrote:
> From: Darrick J. Wong <djwong@kernel.org>
>
> Now that we've converted xfs_reflink_remap_extent to use the new
> xfs_trans_alloc_inode API, we can focus on its slightly unusual behavior
> with regard to quota reservations.
>
> Since it's valid to remap written blocks into a hole, we must be able to
> increase the quota count by the number of blocks in the mapping.
> However, the incore space reservation process requires us to supply an
> asymptotic guess before we can gain exclusive access to resources. We'd
> like to reserve all the quota we need up front, but we also don't want
> to fail a written -> allocated remap operation unnecessarily.
>
> The solution is to make the remap_extents function call the transaction
> allocation function twice. The first time we ask to reserve enough
> space and quota to handle the absolute worst case situation, but if that
> fails, we can fall back to the old strategy: ask for the bare minimum
> space reservation upfront and increase the quota reservation later if we
> need to.
>
> This isn't a problem now, but in the next patchset we change the
> transaction and quota code to try to reclaim space if we cannot reserve
> free space or quota. Restructuring the remap_extent function in this
> manner means that if the fallback increase fails, we can pass that back
> to the caller knowing that the transaction allocation already tried
> freeing space.

The patch itself looks good, but I don't see what problem it solves.

Maybe I'll find out when reading the remaining patches..