linux-ext4 - Re: lazytime implementation questions

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Date:	Wed, 6 Jan 2016 09:59:07 +1100
From:	Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com>
To:	Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>
Cc:	xfs@....sgi.com, linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, linux-api@...r.kernel.org,
	tytso@....edu
Subject: Re: lazytime implementation questions

On Tue, Jan 05, 2016 at 06:36:04PM +0100, Jan Kara wrote:
>   Hi,
> 
> On Mon 04-01-16 17:22:19, Dave Chinner wrote:
> > I've been looking at implementing the lazytime mount option for XFS,
> > and I'm struggling to work out what it is supposed to mean.
> > 
> > AFAICT, on ext4, lazytime means that pure timestamp updates are not
> > journalled and they are only ever written back when the inode is
> > otherwise dirtied and written, or they are timestamp dirty for 24
> > hours which triggers writeback.
> > 
> > This poses a couple of problems for XFS:
> > 
> > 	1. we log every timestamp change, so there is no mechanism
> > 	   for delayed/deferred update.
> > 
> > 	2. we track dirty metadata in the journal, not via the VFS
> > 	   dirty inode lists, so all the infrastructure written for
> > 	   ext4 to do periodic flushing is useless to us.
> > 
> > These are solvable problems, but what I'm not sure about is exactly
> > what the intended semantics of lazytime durability are. That is,
> > exactly what guaranteed are we giving userspace about timestamp
> > updates when lazytime is used? The guarantees we have to give will
> > greatly influence the XFS implementation, so I really need to nail
> > down what we are expected to provide userspace. Can we:
> > 
> > 	a) just ignore all durability concerns?
> > 	b) if not, do we only need to care about the 24 hour
> > 	   writeback and unmount?
> > 	c) if not, are fsync/sync/syncfs/freeze/unmount supposed
> > 	   to provide durability of all metadata changes?
> > 	d) do we have to care about ordering - if we fsync one inode
> > 	   with 1 hour old timestamps, do we also need to guarantee
> > 	   that all the inodes with older dirty timestamps also get
> > 	   made durable?
> 
> So the intended semantics is:
> 1) fsync / sync / freeze / unmount will write the timestamp updates even
>    with lazytime. So unless crash happens, timestamps are guaranteed to be
>    consistent. Also sync / fsync guarantees all changes to get to disk.
> 2) We periodically write back timestamps (once per 24 hours) to avoid too
>    big timestamp inconsistencies in case of crash.

Ok, so it's supposed to be a delayed timestamp update mechanism
without any specific ordering guarantees, not an opportunistic
timestamp update mechanism.

I can work with that.

Cheers,

Dave.
-- 
Dave Chinner
david@...morbit.com
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