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authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2018-08-13 22:34:47 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2018-08-13 22:34:47 -0700
commit10f3e23f07cb0c20f9bcb77a5b5a7eb2a1b2a2fe (patch)
tree1fcb34309b3542512c6f3345f092f7adb8c3312c /Documentation/filesystems/ext4/ondisk/bigalloc.rst
parentMerge tag '4.19-smb3' of git://git.samba.org/sfrench/cifs-2.6 (diff)
parentext4: remove unneeded variable "err" in ext4_mb_release_inode_pa() (diff)
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Merge tag 'ext4_for_linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tytso/ext4
Pull ext4 updates from Ted Ts'o: - Convert content from the ext4 wiki to Documentation rst files so it is more likely to be updated as we add new features to ext4. - Add 64-bit timestamp support to ext4's superblock fields. - ... and the usual bug fixes and cleanups, including a Spectre gadget fixup and some hardening against maliciously corrupted file systems. * tag 'ext4_for_linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tytso/ext4: (34 commits) ext4: remove unneeded variable "err" in ext4_mb_release_inode_pa() ext4: improve code readability in ext4_iget() ext4: fix spectre gadget in ext4_mb_regular_allocator() ext4: check for NUL characters in extended attribute's name ext4: use ext4_warning() for sb_getblk failure ext4: fix race when setting the bitmap corrupted flag ext4: reset error code in ext4_find_entry in fallback ext4: handle layout changes to pinned DAX mappings dax: dax_layout_busy_page() warn on !exceptional docs: fix up the obviously obsolete bits in the new ext4 documentation docs: add new ext4 superblock time extension fields docs: create filesystem internal section ext4: use swap macro in mext_page_double_lock ext4: check allocation failure when duplicating "data" in ext4_remount() ext4: fix warning message in ext4_enable_quotas() ext4: super: extend timestamps to 40 bits jbd2: replace current_kernel_time64 with ktime equivalent ext4: use timespec64 for all inode times ext4: use ktime_get_real_seconds for i_dtime ext4: use 64-bit timestamps for mmp_time ...
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+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+Bigalloc
+--------
+
+At the moment, the default size of a block is 4KiB, which is a commonly
+supported page size on most MMU-capable hardware. This is fortunate, as
+ext4 code is not prepared to handle the case where the block size
+exceeds the page size. However, for a filesystem of mostly huge files,
+it is desirable to be able to allocate disk blocks in units of multiple
+blocks to reduce both fragmentation and metadata overhead. The
+`bigalloc <Bigalloc>`__ feature provides exactly this ability. The
+administrator can set a block cluster size at mkfs time (which is stored
+in the s\_log\_cluster\_size field in the superblock); from then on, the
+block bitmaps track clusters, not individual blocks. This means that
+block groups can be several gigabytes in size (instead of just 128MiB);
+however, the minimum allocation unit becomes a cluster, not a block,
+even for directories. TaoBao had a patchset to extend the “use units of
+clusters instead of blocks” to the extent tree, though it is not clear
+where those patches went-- they eventually morphed into “extent tree v2”
+but that code has not landed as of May 2015.
+