linux-ext4 - Re: [PATCH 26/25] libext2fs: call get_alloc

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Date:	Thu, 11 Sep 2014 15:34:47 -0700
From:	"Darrick J. Wong" <darrick.wong@...cle.com>
To:	"Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>
Cc:	linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 26/25] libext2fs: call get_alloc_block hook when
 allocating blocks

On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 06:05:52PM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 12:41:53PM -0700, Darrick J. Wong wrote:
> > If a libext2fs client has provided a get_alloc_block hook, we need to
> > ensure that all code paths in the library use it to allocate blocks.
> 
> I noticed you didn't replace ext2fs_new_block[2] with
> ext2fs_alloc_block[2] everywhere, because ext2fs_alloc_block[2]() does
> extra work; specifically, it zeroes the newly allocated data block.
> In the case of mkjournal.c, that would be disastrous from a
> performance perspective, since we go to significant work to avoid
> zeroing blocks one at a time.
> 
> But in other cases, when we create a symlink, expand a directory,
> etc., we're still doing a double write (once in ext2fs_alloc_block,
> and then a second time after ext2fs_alloc_block returns).
> 
> Hmm... I wonder if we can get away with changing ext2fs_new_block2(fs,
> goal, bmap, ret_blk) so that if bmap is NULL, we change its behavior
> so that (a) it tries to use the get_alloc_block() hook if it is present, and
> (b) it will try to load the block bitmap if it is not already loaded,
> instead of returning an error.

Quite probably.  I tried to avoid API behavioral change, at least for the
inital patch, though I was thinking that a general cleanup was probably in
order.

> There are very few clients that are registering a get_alloc_block hook
> today, and so it seems highly unlikely that this will cause problems.
> What do you think?

e2fuzz found the usual "using the wrong bitmap" bug in mkjournal.c, and patch
#29 (which you just applied) makes e2fsck a client of expand_dir.  So long as
e2fsck is never changed to use _mkdir() and _symlink() we can probably get away
with not bothering, but then we'll quietly introduce this corruption bug again
if e2fsck ever does start using them.

Also any other client who uses the alloc_block hook will be silently broken.
Less broken than now, but I don't like discarding a small fix because we don't
guess anyone will care if it stays broken.

--D

> 
> 						- Ted
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