Re: [PATCH 03/11] vfs: Add better VFS support for page_mkwrite whenblocksize < pagesize

From: Aneesh Kumar K.V
Date: Thu May 28 2009 - 09:10:31 EST


On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 09:03:41AM -0400, Josef Bacik wrote:
> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 03:01:00PM +0200, Jan Kara wrote:
> >
>
> Sorry, another possibly braindead question. When we extend the i_size you make
> it so that the page will be faulted the next time it's written to via
> page_mkclean, which from what I can tell is done via pte_wrprotect. The problem
> with this is the next time we write to the page, we do pte_mkwrite, which makes
> it so that we won't fault the next time we write, correct? So if I were to do
>
> ftruncate(fd, 0);
> pwrite(fd, buf, 1024, 0);
> map = mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, fd, 0);
> map[0] = 'a';
> ftruncate(fd, 10000);
> map[0] = 'b'; --> causes a page fault again


This will do block allocation for the entire page within i_size. (ie multiple blocks)
ext4_page_mkwrite have

size = i_size_read(..)
if (page->index == size >> PAGE_CACHE_SHIFT)
len = size & ~PAGE_CACHE_MASK;
else
len = PAGE_CACHE_SIZE;


> memset(map, 'a', 4096); --> wouldn't cause a pagefault
> writepage at some point
>
> We'd still be in the position that you are trying to solve, correct, since we
> will have dirtied the rest of the page without calling mkwrite for the other
> sections of it, which would result in unallocated blocks when we hit writepage.
> Thanks,
>

-aneesh
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