Date:	Thu, 14 Mar 2013 20:54:42 +0800
From:	Zheng Liu <gnehzuil.liu@...il.com>
To:	Theodore Ts'o <tytso@....edu>
Cc:	linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org, Zheng Liu <wenqing.lz@...bao.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] filefrag: count a contiguous extent when both
 logical and physical blocks are contiguous

On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 04:16:11PM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 04, 2013 at 12:26:18AM +0800, Zheng Liu wrote:
> > From: Zheng Liu <wenqing.lz@...bao.com>
> > 
> > This commit fixes a bug in filefrag that filefrag miss calculates
> > contiguous extent when physical blocks are contiguous but logical blocks
> > aren't.  This case can be created by xfstests #218 or the following
> > script.
> > 
> > 	for I in `seq 0 2 31`; do
> > 		dd if=/dev/zero of=$testfile bs=4k count=1 conv=notrunc \
> > 			seek=$I oflag=sync &>/dev/null
> > 	done
> > 
> > Meanwhile this commit prints expected logical block.
> 
> Hmm, this (and your previous patch) fundamentally raises the question
> of what do we call an "extent", doesn't it?
> 
> Ignoring for now the question of what xfstests #218 is expecting (if
> we disagree with what's "best", we should have a discussion with the
> other fs maintainers, and in the worst case, make our own version of
> the test), the question is how should defragmentation handle sparse
> files?  In general, sparse files imply that random access workload, so
> whether or not the file is contiguous doesn't really matter much.
> 
> If we want to optimize the time to copy said sparse file, and if we
> assume that by the time we are defragging said sparse file, we are
> done doing writes which will allocate new blocks, then having defrag
> optimize the file so that when the extents are sorted by logical block
> number, the physical block numbers are contiguous, then that's
> probably the best "figure of merit" to use.  And I'll note that right
> now that's what filefrag is reporting, and what I think e4defrag
> should be changed to use when deciding whether the donor file is
> "better" than the original file.
> 
> But that's not necessarily the only way to measure extents, and the
> current e4defrag code is clearly of the opinion that if the file is
> using a contiguous region of blocks, even if the blocks were allocated
> "backwards", that there's no point defragging the file, since after
> all, if the file was written in such a random order with respect to
> logical block numbers, it will probably be read in a random order, so
> keeping the file blocks used contiguous to minimize free block
> fragmentation is the best thing to shoot for.
> 
> It's not clear that there's one right answer, but things will be a lot
> less confusing if we can agree amongst ourselves what answer we want
> to use --- and then if we need to either change the xfstests, or maybe
> create an option to filefrag to calculate the number of fragments that
> the xfstest is expecting.  But we should first decide what is the
> right thing, and then we can see whether or not what it matches what
> the test is demanding.

Thanks for the explanation.  Indeed the key problem is how to define an
extent.  I agree with you that we shouldn't only match what the test
expects, and just let test case pass.

Regards,
                                                - Zheng
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