Re: [PATCH] loop: properly observe rotational flag of underlying device

From: Jens Axboe
Date: Wed Nov 11 2015 - 16:29:46 EST


On 11/11/2015 08:21 AM, Holger HoffstÃtte wrote:

The loop driver always declares the rotational flag of its device as
rotational, even when the device of the mapped file is nonrotational,
as is the case with SSDs or on tmpfs. This can confuse filesystem tools
which are SSD-aware; in my case I frequently forget to tell mkfs.btrfs
that my loop device on tmpfs is nonrotational, and that I really don't
need any automatic metadata redundancy.

The attached patch fixes this by introspecting the rotational flag of the
mapped file's underlying block device, if it exists. If the mapped file's
filesystem has no associated block device - as is the case on e.g. tmpfs -
we assume nonrotational storage. If there is a better way to identify such
non-devices I'd love to hear them.

Signed-off-by: Holger HoffstÃtte <holger.hoffstaette@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
drivers/block/loop.c | 19 +++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 19 insertions(+)

diff --git a/drivers/block/loop.c b/drivers/block/loop.c
index 423f4ca..2984aca 100644
--- a/drivers/block/loop.c
+++ b/drivers/block/loop.c
@@ -843,6 +843,24 @@ static void loop_config_discard(struct loop_device *lo)
queue_flag_set_unlocked(QUEUE_FLAG_DISCARD, q);
}

+static void loop_update_rotational(struct loop_device *lo)
+{
+ struct file *file = lo->lo_backing_file;
+ struct inode *file_inode = file->f_mapping->host;
+ struct block_device *file_bdev = file_inode->i_sb->s_bdev;
+ struct request_queue *q = lo->lo_queue;
+ bool nonrot = true;
+
+ /* not all filesystems (e.g. tmpfs) have a sb->s_bdev */
+ if (file_bdev)
+ nonrot = blk_queue_nonrot(bdev_get_queue(file_bdev));
+
+ if (nonrot)
+ queue_flag_set_unlocked(QUEUE_FLAG_NONROT, q);
+ else
+ queue_flag_clear_unlocked(QUEUE_FLAG_NONROT, q);
+}

Are we sure we want to change the default from rot to nonrot?

Apart from that, looks good.

--
Jens Axboe

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