Re: Problems with determining data presence by examining extents?

[David Howells]

Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxx> wrote:

> The whole idea of an out of band interface is going to be racy and suffer
> from implementation loss.  I think what you want is something similar to
> the NFSv4.2 READ_PLUS operation - give me that if there is any and
> otherwise tell me that there is a hole.  I think this could be a new
> RWF_NOHOLE or similar flag, just how to return the hole size would be
> a little awkward.  Maybe return a specific negative error code (ENODATA?)
> and advance the iov anyway.

Just having call_iter_read() return a short read could be made to suffice...
provided the filesystem doesn't return data I haven't written in (which could
cause apparent corruption) and does return data I have written in (otherwise I
have to go back to the server).

David