Re: [PATCH v5.1 0/2] create BLKZEROOUT ioctl that invalidates page cache

Arnd Bergmann
2016-03-02T10:55:55Z

On Wednesday 02 March 2016 01:44:16 Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 02, 2016 at 10:15:02AM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> > I'm missing the background on this, just saw the patch fly by,
> > so sorry if this has been asked before:
> >
> > Why do you want to invalidate the cache? Is this to save RAM
> > or is something else going to write here and you have to invalidate
> > it for correctness?
>
> BLKZEROOUT can be though as a direct I/O operation - it issues a
> WRITE SAME (or similar) command straight to the device to zero
> the specified range. If there was cached data for this range it would
> now be stale.

Ok, got it. Thanks,

Arnd