linux-kernel - Re: Proposal for "proper" durable fsync() and fdatasync()

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Date:	Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:02:14 +0100
From:	Jörn Engel <joern@...fs.org>
To:	Jamie Lokier <jamie@...reable.org>
Cc:	Jörn Engel <joern@...fs.org>,
	Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
	Chris Wedgwood <cw@...f.org>
Subject: Re: Proposal for "proper" durable fsync() and fdatasync()

On Tue, 26 February 2008 15:28:10 +0000, Jamie Lokier wrote:
> 
> > One interesting aspect of this comes with COW filesystems like btrfs or
> > logfs.  Writing out data pages is not sufficient, because those will get
> > lost unless their referencing metadata is written as well.  So either we
> > have to call fsync for those filesystems or add another callback and let
> > filesystems override the default implementation.
> 
> Doesn't the ->fsync callback get called in the sys_fdatasync() case,
> with appropriate arguments?

My paragraph above was aimed at the sync_file_range() case.  fsync and
fdatasync do the right thing within the limitations you brought up in
this thread.  sync_file_range() without further changes will only write
data pages, not the metadata required to actually access those data
pages.  This works just fine for non-COW filesystems, which covers all
currently merged ones.

With COW filesystems it is currently impossible to do sync_file_range()
properly.  The problem is orthogonal to your's, I just brought it up
since you were already mentioning sync_file_range().

Jörn

-- 
Joern's library part 10:
http://blogs.msdn.com/David_Gristwood/archive/2004/06/24/164849.aspx
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