[PATCH v2 1/2] fat: batch synchronous mirror writes

From: Matheus Alves de Almeida

Date: Mon Oct 26 2026 - 12:40:16 EST


fat_mirror_bhs() currently synchronizes buffer-by-buffer on synchronous
mounts, serializing I/O and degrading performance.

Make fat_mirror_bhs() batch dirty buffer heads and use fat_sync_bhs()
to sync several at once. Add a fat_brelse_array() helper that releases
buffer heads in an array.

Benchmarking was done under QEMU/KVM with a virtio-blk device using
cache=directsync. Each result is the arithmetic mean of 10 samples.

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

Sync-mounted FAT32 using count=16 files:
File size Cluster size Before After Improvement
256MiB 512B 49.81s 12.26s 4.06x
1MiB 512B 0.198s 0.057s 3.50x
256MiB 4096B 7.060s 1.640s 4.31x
1MiB 4096B 0.073s 0.028s 2.60x

Asynchronous mounts were also benchmarked with no noticeable performance
change.

Signed-off-by: Matheus Alves de Almeida <matheus.aalmeida@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
fs/fat/fat.h | 1 +
fs/fat/fatent.c | 80 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------
fs/fat/misc.c | 6 ++++
3 files changed, 64 insertions(+), 23 deletions(-)

diff --git a/fs/fat/fat.h b/fs/fat/fat.h
index 1d051d0628b6..204c7b87108f 100644
--- a/fs/fat/fat.h
+++ b/fs/fat/fat.h
@@ -479,6 +479,7 @@ void fat_truncate_time(struct inode *inode, struct timespec64 *now,
int fat_update_time(struct inode *inode, enum fs_update_time type,
unsigned int flags);
extern int fat_sync_bhs(struct buffer_head **bhs, int nr_bhs);
+void fat_brelse_array(struct buffer_head *bhs[], int n);

int fat_cache_init(void);
void fat_cache_destroy(void);
diff --git a/fs/fat/fatent.c b/fs/fat/fatent.c
index 8897a5dd522d..d42b5324531a 100644
--- a/fs/fat/fatent.c
+++ b/fs/fat/fatent.c
@@ -376,42 +376,76 @@ int fat_ent_read(struct inode *inode, struct fat_entry *fatent, int entry)
return ops->ent_get(fatent);
}

-/* FIXME: We can write the blocks as more big chunk. */
-static int fat_mirror_bhs(struct super_block *sb, struct buffer_head **bhs,
- int nr_bhs)
+static int fat_mirror_one(struct super_block *sb, struct buffer_head **bhs,
+ int nr_bhs, int target)
{
struct msdos_sb_info *sbi = MSDOS_SB(sb);
+ sector_t backup_fat = sbi->fat_length * target;
+ /*
+ * Use the value of MAX_BUF_PER_PAGE for 4K pages. This reduces stack
+ * usage on large-page architectures as callers may already have a
+ * MAX_BUF_PER_PAGE-sized array in their stack.
+ */
+ struct buffer_head *dirty[8];
struct buffer_head *c_bh;
- int err, n, copy;
+ int err, n, nr_dirty;

+ nr_dirty = 0;
err = 0;
- for (copy = 1; copy < sbi->fats; copy++) {
- sector_t backup_fat = sbi->fat_length * copy;
-
- for (n = 0; n < nr_bhs; n++) {
- c_bh = sb_getblk(sb, backup_fat + bhs[n]->b_blocknr);
- if (!c_bh) {
- err = -ENOMEM;
- goto error;
+ for (n = 0; n < nr_bhs; n++) {
+ c_bh = sb_getblk(sb, backup_fat + bhs[n]->b_blocknr);
+ if (!c_bh) {
+ err = -ENOMEM;
+ goto error;
+ }
+ /* Avoid race with userspace read via bdev */
+ lock_buffer(c_bh);
+ memcpy(c_bh->b_data, bhs[n]->b_data, sb->s_blocksize);
+ set_buffer_uptodate(c_bh);
+ unlock_buffer(c_bh);
+ mmb_mark_buffer_dirty(c_bh,
+ &MSDOS_I(sbi->fat_inode)->i_metadata_bhs);
+ if (sb->s_flags & SB_SYNCHRONOUS) {
+ dirty[nr_dirty] = c_bh;
+ ++nr_dirty;
+ if (nr_dirty == ARRAY_SIZE(dirty)) {
+ err = fat_sync_bhs(dirty, nr_dirty);
+ fat_brelse_array(dirty, nr_dirty);
+ nr_dirty = 0;
+ if (err)
+ goto error;
}
- /* Avoid race with userspace read via bdev */
- lock_buffer(c_bh);
- memcpy(c_bh->b_data, bhs[n]->b_data, sb->s_blocksize);
- set_buffer_uptodate(c_bh);
- unlock_buffer(c_bh);
- mmb_mark_buffer_dirty(c_bh,
- &MSDOS_I(sbi->fat_inode)->i_metadata_bhs);
- if (sb->s_flags & SB_SYNCHRONOUS)
- err = sync_dirty_buffer(c_bh);
+ } else {
brelse(c_bh);
- if (err)
- goto error;
}
}
+
error:
+ if (nr_dirty) {
+ int err2 = fat_sync_bhs(dirty, nr_dirty);
+ if (!err)
+ err = err2;
+ fat_brelse_array(dirty, nr_dirty);
+ }
+
return err;
}

+static int fat_mirror_bhs(struct super_block *sb, struct buffer_head **bhs,
+ int nr_bhs)
+{
+ struct msdos_sb_info *sbi = MSDOS_SB(sb);
+ int copy;
+
+ for (copy = 1; copy < sbi->fats; copy++) {
+ int err = fat_mirror_one(sb, bhs, nr_bhs, copy);
+ if (err)
+ return err;
+ }
+
+ return 0;
+}
+
int fat_ent_write(struct inode *inode, struct fat_entry *fatent,
int new, int wait)
{
diff --git a/fs/fat/misc.c b/fs/fat/misc.c
index 0d04228f916e..b6a9e2e122cd 100644
--- a/fs/fat/misc.c
+++ b/fs/fat/misc.c
@@ -365,3 +365,9 @@ int fat_sync_bhs(struct buffer_head **bhs, int nr_bhs)
}
return err;
}
+
+void fat_brelse_array(struct buffer_head *bhs[], int n)
+{
+ while (--n >= 0)
+ brelse(bhs[n]);
+}
--
2.43.0