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Message-ID: <47B5A088.6050801@redhat.com>
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 08:24:08 -0600
From: Eric Sandeen <sandeen@...hat.com>
To: Takashi Sato <t-sato@...jp.nec.com>
CC: Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
Andreas Dilger <adilger@....com>, Theodore Tso <tytso@....EDU>,
linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC] ext3 freeze feature
Takashi Sato wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Christoph Hellwig wrote:
>> On Fri, Feb 08, 2008 at 08:26:57AM -0500, Andreas Dilger wrote:
>>> You may as well make the common ioctl the same as the XFS version,
>>> both by number and parameters, so that applications which already
>>> understand the XFS ioctl will work on other filesystems.
>> Yes. In facy you should be able to lift the implementations of
>> XFS_IOC_FREEZE and XFS_IOC_THAW to generic code, there's nothing
>> XFS-specific in there.
>
> According to Documentation/ioctl-number.txt,
> XFS_IOC_XXXs (_IOWR('X', aa, bb)) are defined for XFS like below.
> From Documentation/ioctl-number.txt:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Code Seq# Include File Comments
> ========================================================
> : :
> 'X' all linux/xfs_fs.h
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
It also says:
'f' 00-1F linux/ext2_fs.h
and yet include/linux.h has:
#define FS_IOC_GETFLAGS _IOR('f', 1, long)
#define FS_IOC_SETFLAGS _IOW('f', 2, long)
as generic vfs ioctls. These ioctls started out as
EXT2_IOC_SETFLAGS/EXT2_IOC_GETFLAGS but they were generically useful,
other filesystems picked them up, and they were "elevated" to the vfs.
> So XFS_IOC_FREEZE and XFS_IOC_THAW cannot be lifted to generic code simply.
It would be a simple matter of changing the documentation, I think.
> I think we should create new generic numbers for freeze and thaw
> like FIBMAP as followings.
> linux/fs.h:
> #define FIFREEZE _IO(0x00,3)
> #define FITHAW _IO(0x00,4)
>
> And xfs_freeze calls XFS_IOC_FREEZE with a magic number 1, but what is 1?
Looks like it's called "level" but it's probably a holdover, it doesn't
look like it's used.
> Instead, I'd like the sec to timeout on freeze API in order to thaw
> the filesystem automatically. It can prevent a filesystem from staying
> frozen forever.
> (Because a freezer may cause a deadlock by accessing the frozen filesystem.)
I'm still not very comfortable with the timeout; if you un-freeze on a
timer, how do you know that the work for which you needed the fileystem
frozen is complete? How would you know if your snapshot was good if
there's a possibility that the fs unfroze while it was being taken?
Thanks,
-Eric
> Any comments are very welcome.
>
> Cheers, Takashi
>
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