linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] writeback: Don't wait for completion in writeback_inodes_sb

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Message-ID: <20110722151139.GB30317@infradead.org>
Date:	Fri, 22 Jul 2011 11:11:39 -0400
From:	Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>
To:	Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>
Cc:	Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
	Curt Wohlgemuth <curtw@...gle.com>,
	Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>,
	linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	fengguang.wu@...el.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH] writeback: Don't wait for completion in
 writeback_inodes_sb_nr

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 12:00:12AM +0200, Jan Kara wrote:
> > Removing this call breaks sys_syncfs and similar semantics on filesystem
> > just pushing metadata into buffers in ->write_inode or ->sync_fs and
> > then expecting the caller to write them out.  This list of filesystem
> > includes ext2 and in general most filesystems without journaling or
> > similar technics.
>   Note that for sys_syncfs() the __sync_blockdev() has just moved from
> __sync_filesystem() to sync_filesystem(). So nothing should change.

Sorry, I missed that.

> > I'm perfectly fine with pushing the sync_blockdev call into the
> > filesystem for these, but we'll need a way to handle them.
>   Yes, calling sync_blockdev() from sync_fs() might actually make sence
> (e.g. ext3 and ext4 don't need it) but I didn't want to go that far in
> this patch.

The more fine-grained we can split the patches, the better.  It'll help
to explain what we're doing to thise trying to figure out a few years
down the road.

> > At which point we could fold this code into a blkdev_sync_fs method for
> > now.  Long term we'll need to support multiple BDIs per SB anyway, at
> > which point the code can go away again.
>   Ah, I had to think a bit before I understood what you mean :). It's kind
> of elegant but also slightly subtle (it's not immediately obvious how
> blockdevs are synced during sync when you look at the code). Umm, and you
> don't have any guarantee in which order superblocks are on the sb list so
> you could sync block devices before some filesystems are finished. So I
> don't think using blkdev_sync_fs() is a good idea after all.

This required calling sync_blkdev from ->sync_fs of those filesystems
that actually need it as a pre-requisite of course.

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