Re: fscache: Redesigning the on-disk cache

[David Howells]

Dave Chinner <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > > With ->fiemap() you can at least make the distinction between a non
> > > existing and an UNWRITTEN extent.
> > 
> > I can't use that for XFS, Ext4 or btrfs, I suspect.  Christoph and Dave's
> > assertion is that the cache can't rely on the backing filesystem's metadata
> > because these can arbitrarily insert or remove blocks of zeros to bridge or
> > split extents.
> 
> Well, that's not the big problem. The issue that makes FIEMAP
> unusable for determining if there is user data present in a file is
> that on-disk extent maps aren't exactly coherent with in-memory user
> data state.
> 
> That is, we can have a hole on disk with delalloc user data in
> memory.  There's user data in the file, just not on disk. Same goes
> for unwritten extents - there can be dirty data in memory over an
> unwritten extent, and it won't get converted to written until the
> data is written back and the filesystem runs a conversion
> transaction.
> 
> So, yeah, if you use FIEMAP to determine where data lies in a file
> that is being actively modified, you're going get corrupt data
> sooner rather than later.  SEEK_HOLE/DATA are coherent with in
> memory user data, so don't have this problem.

I thought you and/or Christoph said it *was* a problem to use the backing
filesystem's metadata to track presence of data in the cache because the
filesystem (or its tools) can arbitrarily insert blocks of zeros to
bridge/break up extents.

If that is the case, then that is a big problem, and SEEK_HOLE/DATA won't
suffice.

If it's not a problem - maybe if I can set a mark on a file to tell the
filesystem and tools not to do that - then that would obviate the need for me
to store my own maps.

David