[RFC][PATCH] add support for shrinking/growing a pipe (Was "Re: splice methods in character device driver")

[Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>]

On Tue, Jun 16 2009, Steve Rottinger wrote:
> >> Although,  I think that most of the overhead that I was experiencing
> >> came from the cumulative
> >> overhead of each splice system call.   I increased my pipe size using
> >> Jens' pipe size patch,
> >> from 16 to 256 pages, and this had a huge effect -- the speed of my
> >> transfers more than doubled.
> >> Pipe sizes larger that 256 pages, cause my kernel to crash.
> >>     
> >
> > Yes, the system call is more expensive. Increasing the pipe size can
> > definitely help there.
> >
> >   
> I know that you have been asked this before, but is there any chance
> that we can
> get the pipe size patch into the kernel mainline?  It seems like it is
> essential to
> moving data fast using the splice interface.

Sure, the only unresolved issue with it is what sort of interface to
export for changing the pipe size. I went with fcntl().

Linus, I think we discussed this years ago. The patch in question is
here:

http://git.kernel.dk/?p=linux-2.6-block.git;a=commit;h=24547ac4d97bebb58caf9ce58bd507a95c812a3f

I'd like to get it in now, there has been several requests for this in
the past. But I didn't want to push it before this was resolved.

I don't know whether other operating systems allow this functionality,
and if they do what interface they use. I suspect that our need is
somewhat special, since we have splice.

-- 
Jens Axboe