[PATCH 7/8] ext4: don't zeroout if we have inflight unwritten IOs in buffered iomap path

From: Ojaswin Mujoo

Date: Mon Nov 02 2026 - 13:59:19 EST


The i_conv_pending_ios counter tracks the number of unwritten IOs that
are currently undergoing endio conversion, and is used to prevent
ext4_can_zeroout() from zeroing out unwritten extents that have valid
data pending conversion.

Enable the tracking for the buffered iomap writeback path by incrementing
i_conv_pending_ios once per submitted unwritten ioend in
ext4_iomap_writeback_submit() and decrement it after extent conversion.

Fixes: 8c4f6e337634 ("ext4: introduce a mount option for iomap buffered I/O path")
Signed-off-by: Ojaswin Mujoo <ojaswin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
fs/ext4/inode.c | 3 +++
fs/ext4/page-io.c | 19 +++++++++++++++++++
2 files changed, 22 insertions(+)

diff --git a/fs/ext4/inode.c b/fs/ext4/inode.c
index 9d7d4da0071f..0c924ad8210b 100644
--- a/fs/ext4/inode.c
+++ b/fs/ext4/inode.c
@@ -4585,6 +4585,9 @@ static int ext4_iomap_writeback_submit(struct iomap_writepage_ctx *wpc,
if (ioend->io_bio.bi_end_io)
bio_clear_flag(&ioend->io_bio, BIO_COMPLETE_IN_TASK);

+ if (ioend->io_flags & IOMAP_IOEND_UNWRITTEN)
+ ext4_conv_pending_inc(inode);
+
return iomap_ioend_writeback_submit(wpc, error);
}

diff --git a/fs/ext4/page-io.c b/fs/ext4/page-io.c
index 00abef904702..e99816017a18 100644
--- a/fs/ext4/page-io.c
+++ b/fs/ext4/page-io.c
@@ -652,6 +652,21 @@ static void ext4_iomap_finish_ioend(struct iomap_ioend *ioend)
int credits;
int ret, err;

+ /*
+ * We increment conv_pending for each IO we submit but endio might have
+ * merged them into a single ioend. The data of all merged sub-ioends is
+ * covered by a single conversion, so drop their counts keeping just
+ * the one count for the single ioend we will try to convert.
+ */
+ if (ioend->io_flags & IOMAP_IOEND_UNWRITTEN) {
+ struct iomap_ioend *sub;
+
+ list_for_each_entry(sub, &ioend->io_list, io_list) {
+ if (sub->io_flags & IOMAP_IOEND_UNWRITTEN)
+ ext4_conv_pending_dec(inode);
+ }
+ }
+
ret = blk_status_to_errno(ioend->io_bio.bi_status);
if (is_disksize_grow)
trace_ext4_iomap_wb_disksize_pending_complete(ioend->io_inode,
@@ -704,6 +719,10 @@ static void ext4_iomap_finish_ioend(struct iomap_ioend *ioend)
inode->i_ino, ret);
}
out:
+ /* Drop the count of the head ioend now that conversion is done. */
+ if (ioend->io_flags & IOMAP_IOEND_UNWRITTEN)
+ ext4_conv_pending_dec(inode);
+
iomap_finish_ioends(ioend, ret);
}


--
2.55.0