Re: Nanosecond fs timestamp support: sad

J. Bruce Fields
2011-07-22T22:32:03Z

On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 06:10:39PM -0400, bfields wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 11:47:32PM +0200, Andi Kleen wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 04:11:42PM -0500, Matt Mackall wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2011-07-22 at 22:59 +0200, Andi Kleen wrote:
> > > > > Indeed. Only usefully exists on ext4 and requires extra system calls.
> > > >
> > > > Not sure what you mean? It's in stat(2), just like the timestamps.
> > >
> > > I don't see anything that looks like a version or generation number in
> > > either the man pages, the asm-generic/stat.h, or glibc's asm/stat.h.
> > > Pointer?
> >
> > Hmm you're right. I thought it was in there, but apparently not.
> > I think it should be added there though. We still have some unused
> > fields.
>
> But last I checked I thought it was only ext4 that actually incremented
> the i_version on IO, and even then only when given a (non-default) mount
> option.
>
> My notes on what needs to be done there:
>
> - collect data to determine whether turning on i_version causes
> any significant performance regressions.
> - Last I talked to him, Ted Tso recommended running
> Bonnie on a local disk, since it does a lot of little
> writes, which is somewhat of a worst case, as it will
> generate extra metadata updates for each write.
> Compare total wall-clock time, number of iops, and
> number of bytes (using some kind of block tracing).
> - If there aren't any problems, turn it on by default, and we're
> done.

(Well,and talk the other filesystem implementors into doing it.)

--b.

> If there are unfixable problems, consider something
> more complicated (like turning on i_version automatically when
> someone asks for it).
> - We need to check that i_version is also doing something
> sensible on directory as well as on file inodes.
> - We also need to think about what it does after reboots. (E.g.
> what is an nfs server to do if clients see the i_version go
> backwards (and hence possible repeat old values) after a
> reboot?)
> - Double-check the order that data updates and i_version updates
> are done in. (Ideal would be if they were atomic, but for
> nfsd's purposes at least it should be adequate if the
> i_version comes after, and no later than the next commit.)
>
> --b.