linux-ext4 - Re: Kernel thread to zero itables for lazy_itable

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Date:	Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:37:56 -0600
From:	Andreas Dilger <adilger@....com>
To:	Howard Cochran <hcochran@...mark.com>
Cc:	linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Kernel thread to zero itables for lazy_itable_init?

On Jun 10, 2009  18:41 -0400, Howard Cochran wrote:
> What is the status of the code to start a background kernel thread to  
> zero the inode tables when filesystem that was created with mke2fs -E  
> lazy_itable_init is mounted?  All I have found is a patch set posted to  
> this mailing list back on November 21, 2008 and some discussion of the  
> implementation, but nothing after that.
>
> Is this effort still alive?

I don't think anyone is currently working on it.

> On a related note, from what I have read here, and from looking at the  
> ext4 kernel code, the filesystem itself never really requires the inode  
> tables to be zeroed out.  The only reason one might want to do that is  
> so that fsck does not detect false errors. 

Correct, but the risk is that the whole filesystem could become corrupted
by the old data in the inode table.

> So, I am wondering whether we really need the complexity of a kernel  
> thread to zero out the itable (or the long delay of doing it during  
> mke2fs).  Instead, would it not be better to modify fsck to ignore  
> garbage in unallocated inodes, at least for filesystems that have a 
> journal.

Sure, e2fsck already does that, but this is not totally robust.  If
the marker for unallocated inodes itself becomes corrupted (which
will happen eventually, or e2fsck wouldn't ever be needed) then the
aforementioned filesystem-wide corruption could ensue.

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
Sr. Staff Engineer, Lustre Group
Sun Microsystems of Canada, Inc.

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