[PATCH] fat: preallocate space before expanding in fat_cont_expand()

From: Matheus Alves de Almeida

Date: Tue Oct 20 2026 - 16:23:00 EST


The fat_cont_expand() implementation leaves allocation of new clusters
to generic_cont_expand_simple(). This path does many small cluster
allocations, harming performance.

Preallocate cluster space in fat_cont_expand(). Move preallocation to
a new fat_preallocate() helper used by both fat_cont_expand() and
fat_fallocate(FALLOC_FL_KEEP_SIZE).

Benchmarking was done under QEMU/KVM with a virtio-blk device using
cache=none. Each result is the arithmetic mean of the listed samples.

start = now_ns();
for (unsigned i = 0; i < count; i++) {
if (truncate_mode)
ftruncate(fds[i], bytes);
else
fallocate(fds[i], 0, 0, bytes);
}
elapsed = now_ns() - start;

16 files, 512-byte clusters:
length mode sync? before after improvement samples
256MiB ftruncate no 9.576s 5.345s 1.79x 10
256MiB fallocate no 9.634s 5.640s 1.71x 10
1MiB ftruncate yes 58.66s 0.362s 162.15x 5
1MiB fallocate yes 61.36s 0.390s 157.15x 5

128 files, 512-byte clusters:
length mode sync? before after improvement samples
512KiB ftruncate no 0.433s 0.352s 1.23x 10
512KiB fallocate no 0.446s 0.393s 1.13x 10
64KiB ftruncate yes 31.32s 0.429s 73.00x 10
64KiB fallocate yes 29.59s 0.410s 72.42x 10

16 files, 4096-byte clusters:
length mode sync? before after improvement samples
256MiB ftruncate no 5.181s 4.417s 1.17x 10
256MiB fallocate no 5.166s 4.442s 1.16x 10
1MiB ftruncate yes 9.294s 0.111s 84.06x 10
1MiB fallocate yes 8.710s 0.110s 79.36x 10

The biggest improvement is on filesystems with a small cluster size and
on synchronous mounts.

Signed-off-by: Matheus Alves de Almeida <matheus.aalmeida@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
---

This patch depends on:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-fsdevel/20261012171106.146243-1-matheus.aalmeida@xxxxxxxxxxxx/T/#t

fs/fat/file.c | 54 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++------------------
1 file changed, 35 insertions(+), 19 deletions(-)

diff --git a/fs/fat/file.c b/fs/fat/file.c
index 3aa541c6b127..33cef46ce1a0 100644
--- a/fs/fat/file.c
+++ b/fs/fat/file.c
@@ -217,15 +217,48 @@ const struct file_operations fat_file_operations = {
.setlease = generic_setlease,
};

+static int fat_preallocate(struct inode *inode, loff_t new_size)
+{
+ int nr_cluster; /* Number of clusters to be allocated */
+ loff_t mm_bytes; /* Number of bytes to be allocated for file */
+ loff_t ondisksize; /* block aligned on-disk size in bytes*/
+ struct super_block *sb = inode->i_sb;
+ struct msdos_sb_info *sbi = MSDOS_SB(sb);
+
+ ondisksize = inode->i_blocks << 9;
+ if (new_size <= ondisksize)
+ return 0;
+
+ /* First compute the number of clusters to be allocated */
+ mm_bytes = new_size - ondisksize;
+ nr_cluster = (mm_bytes + (sbi->cluster_size - 1)) >>
+ sbi->cluster_bits;
+
+ /* Allocate the clusters. We are not zeroing them out */
+ return fat_add_clusters(inode, nr_cluster);
+}
+
static int fat_cont_expand(struct inode *inode, loff_t size)
{
struct address_space *mapping = inode->i_mapping;
loff_t start = inode->i_size, count = size - inode->i_size;
int err;

- err = generic_cont_expand_simple(inode, size);
+ /*
+ * Preallocating space here is more efficient than during
+ * generic_cont_expand_simple() because of batching.
+ */
+ err = inode_newsize_ok(inode, size);
if (err)
goto out;
+ err = fat_preallocate(inode, size);
+ if (err)
+ goto out;
+ err = generic_cont_expand_simple(inode, size);
+ if (err) {
+ fat_truncate_blocks(inode, inode->i_size);
+ goto out;
+ }

fat_truncate_time(inode, NULL, FAT_UPDATE_CMTIME);
mark_inode_dirty(inode);
@@ -263,12 +296,7 @@ static int fat_cont_expand(struct inode *inode, loff_t size)
static long fat_fallocate(struct file *file, int mode,
loff_t offset, loff_t len)
{
- int nr_cluster; /* Number of clusters to be allocated */
- loff_t mm_bytes; /* Number of bytes to be allocated for file */
- loff_t ondisksize; /* block aligned on-disk size in bytes*/
struct inode *inode = file->f_mapping->host;
- struct super_block *sb = inode->i_sb;
- struct msdos_sb_info *sbi = MSDOS_SB(sb);
int err = 0;

/* No support for hole punch or other fallocate flags. */
@@ -281,19 +309,7 @@ static long fat_fallocate(struct file *file, int mode,

inode_lock(inode);
if (mode & FALLOC_FL_KEEP_SIZE) {
- ondisksize = inode->i_blocks << 9;
- if ((offset + len) <= ondisksize)
- goto error;
-
- /* First compute the number of clusters to be allocated */
- mm_bytes = offset + len - ondisksize;
- nr_cluster = (mm_bytes + (sbi->cluster_size - 1)) >>
- sbi->cluster_bits;
-
- /* Allocate the clusters. We are not zeroing them out */
- err = fat_add_clusters(inode, nr_cluster);
- if (err)
- goto error;
+ err = fat_preallocate(inode, offset + len);
} else {
if ((offset + len) <= i_size_read(inode))
goto error;
--
2.43.0