Re: [PATCH] zonefs: do not use append if device does not support it

[Damien Le Moal <dlemoal@kernel.org>]

On 6/27/23 03:23, Andreas Hindborg (Samsung) wrote:
> 
> Johannes Thumshirn <Johannes.Thumshirn@wdc.com> writes:
> 
>> On 26.06.23 18:47, Andreas Hindborg wrote:
>>> From: "Andreas Hindborg (Samsung)" <nmi@metaspace.dk>
>>>
>>> Zonefs will try to use `zonefs_file_dio_append()` for direct sync writes even if
>>> device `max_zone_append_sectors` is zero. This will cause the IO to fail as the
>>> io vector is truncated to zero. It also causes a call to
>>> `invalidate_inode_pages2_range()` with end set to UINT_MAX, which is probably
>>> not intentional. Thus, do not use append when device does not support it.
>>>
>>
>> I'm sorry but I think it has been stated often enough that for Linux Zone Append
>> is a mandatory feature for a Zoned Block Device. Therefore this path is essentially
>> dead code as max_zone_append_sectors will always be greater than zero.
>>
>> So this is a clear NAK from my side.
> 
> OK, thanks for clarifying 👍 I came across this bugging out while
> playing around with zone append for ublk. The code makes sense if the
> stack expects append to always be present.
> 
> I didn't follow the discussion, could you reiterate why the policy is
> that zoned devices _must_ support append?

To avoid support fragmentation and for performance. btrfs zoned block device
support requires zone append and using that command makes writes much faster as
we do not have to go through zone locking.
Note that for zonefs, I plan to add async zone append support as well, linked
with O_APPEND use to further improve write performance with ZNS drives.

> 
> Best regards,
> Andreas
> 

-- 
Damien Le Moal
Western Digital Research