01 Apr, 2006

1 commit

  • Remove the recently-added LINUX_FADV_ASYNC_WRITE and LINUX_FADV_WRITE_WAIT
    fadvise() additions, do it in a new sys_sync_file_range() syscall instead.
    Reasons:

    - It's more flexible. Things which would require two or three syscalls with
    fadvise() can be done in a single syscall.

    - Using fadvise() in this manner is something not covered by POSIX.

    The patch wires up the syscall for x86.

    The sycall is implemented in the new fs/sync.c. The intention is that we can
    move sys_fsync(), sys_fdatasync() and perhaps sys_sync() into there later.

    Documentation for the syscall is in fs/sync.c.

    A test app (sync_file_range.c) is in
    http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/stuff/ext3-tools.tar.gz.

    The available-to-GPL-modules do_sync_file_range() is for knfsd: "A COMMIT can
    say NFS_DATA_SYNC or NFS_FILE_SYNC. I can skip the ->fsync call for
    NFS_DATA_SYNC which is hopefully the more common."

    Note: the `async' writeout mode SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE will turn synchronous if
    the queue is congested. This is trivial to fix: add a new flag bit, set
    wbc->nonblocking. But I'm not sure that we want to expose implementation
    details down to that level.

    Note: it's notable that we can sync an fd which wasn't opened for writing.
    Same with fsync() and fdatasync()).

    Note: the code takes some care to handle attempts to sync file contents
    outside the 16TB offset on 32-bit machines. It makes such attempts appear to
    succeed, for best 32-bit/64-bit compatibility. Perhaps it should make such
    requests fail...

    Cc: Nick Piggin
    Cc: Michael Kerrisk
    Cc: Ulrich Drepper
    Cc: Neil Brown
    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    Andrew Morton