Re: [PATCH] fs/drop_caches: skip filesystems without fs writeback

From: Jan Kara

Date: Wed Sep 23 2026 - 07:11:40 EST


On Wed 23-09-26 15:01:16, Huang Shijie wrote:
> Filesystems backed by the noop backing device (procfs, sysfs, kernfs,
> tmpfs, ramfs, etc.) have no fs page-cache writeback. Skip them in
> drop_pagecache_sb() instead of walking their inode lists.
>
> This also skips tmpfs/ramfs. tmpfs has clean folios which are
> zero-filled pages from reading holes, which are trivially recreatable.
>
> Suggested-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Huang Shijie <huangsj@xxxxxxxx>

This looks indeed nice & simple. I'm slightly wondering if there isn't some
exotic read-only fs somewhere which doesn't set sb->s_bdi but so far I'm
not aware of anything (even MTD filesystems do properly setup bdi) so feel
free to add:

Reviewed-by: Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx>

Honza

> ---
> The RFC mails:
> https://lore.kernel.org/all/arIVBpMZk5-O2AZc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx/
> ---
> fs/drop_caches.c | 4 ++++
> 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/fs/drop_caches.c b/fs/drop_caches.c
> index 49f56a598ecb..28c5fb9c7357 100644
> --- a/fs/drop_caches.c
> +++ b/fs/drop_caches.c
> @@ -7,6 +7,7 @@
> #include <linux/kernel.h>
> #include <linux/mm.h>
> #include <linux/fs.h>
> +#include <linux/backing-dev.h>
> #include <linux/writeback.h>
> #include <linux/sysctl.h>
> #include <linux/gfp.h>
> @@ -20,6 +21,9 @@ static void drop_pagecache_sb(struct super_block *sb, void *unused)
> {
> struct inode *inode, *toput_inode = NULL;
>
> + if (sb->s_bdi == &noop_backing_dev_info)
> + return;
> +
> spin_lock(&sb->s_inode_list_lock);
> list_for_each_entry(inode, &sb->s_inodes, i_sb_list) {
> spin_lock(&inode->i_lock);
> --
> 2.53.0
>
>
--
Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxxx>
SUSE Labs, CR