Re: Linux 2.6.29

Jens Axboe
2009-03-26T15:46:38Z

On Thu, Mar 26 2009, Hugh Dickins wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Mar 2009, Jens Axboe wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 25 2009, Hugh Dickins wrote:
> > >
> > > Tangential question, but am I right in thinking that BIO_RW_BARRIER
> > > similarly bars across all partitions, whereas its WRITE_BARRIER and
> > > DISCARD_BARRIER users would actually prefer it to apply to just one?
> >
> > All the barriers refer to just that range which the barrier itself
> > references.
>
> Ah, thank you: then I had a fundamental misunderstanding of them,
> and need to go away and work that out some more.
>
> Though I didn't read it before asking, doesn't the I/O Barriers section
> of Documentation/block/biodoc.txt give a very different impression?

I'm sensing a miscommunication here... The ordering constraint is across
devices, at least that is how it is implemented. For file system
barriers (like BIO_RW_BARRIER), it could be per-partition instead. Doing
so would involve some changes at the block layer side, not necessarily
trivial. So I think you were asking about ordering, I was answering
about the write guarantee :-)

--
Jens Axboe