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path: root/include/linux/fadvise.h
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2006-03-31[PATCH] sys_sync_file_range()Andrew Morton
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 <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au> Cc: Michael Kerrisk <mtk-manpages@gmx.net> Cc: Ulrich Drepper <drepper@redhat.com> Cc: Neil Brown <neilb@cse.unsw.edu.au> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-03-24[PATCH] fadvise(): write commandsAndrew Morton
Add two new linux-specific fadvise extensions(): LINUX_FADV_ASYNC_WRITE: start async writeout of any dirty pages between file offsets `offset' and `offset+len'. Any pages which are currently under writeout are skipped, whether or not they are dirty. LINUX_FADV_WRITE_WAIT: wait upon writeout of any dirty pages between file offsets `offset' and `offset+len'. By combining these two operations the application may do several things: LINUX_FADV_ASYNC_WRITE: push some or all of the dirty pages at the disk. LINUX_FADV_WRITE_WAIT, LINUX_FADV_ASYNC_WRITE: push all of the currently dirty pages at the disk. LINUX_FADV_WRITE_WAIT, LINUX_FADV_ASYNC_WRITE, LINUX_FADV_WRITE_WAIT: push all of the currently dirty pages at the disk, wait until they have been written. It should be noted that none of these operations write out the file's metadata. So unless the application is strictly performing overwrites of already-instantiated disk blocks, there are no guarantees here that the data will be available after a crash. To complete this suite of operations I guess we should have a "sync file metadata only" operation. This gives applications access to all the building blocks needed for all sorts of sync operations. But sync-metadata doesn't fit well with the fadvise() interface. Probably it should be a new syscall: sys_fmetadatasync(). The patch also diddles with the meaning of `endbyte' in sys_fadvise64_64(). It is made to represent that last affected byte in the file (ie: it is inclusive). Generally, all these byterange and pagerange functions are inclusive so we can easily represent EOF with -1. As Ulrich notes, these two functions are somewhat abusive of the fadvise() concept, which appears to be "set the future policy for this fd". But these commands are a perfect fit with the fadvise() impementation, and several of the existing fadvise() commands are synchronous and don't affect future policy either. I think we can live with the slight incongruity. Cc: Michael Kerrisk <mtk-manpages@gmx.net> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2005-07-13[PATCH] s390: fadvise hint values.Martin Schwidefsky
Add special case for the POSIX_FADV_DONTNEED and POSIX_FADV_NOREUSE hint values for s390-64. The user space values in the s390-64 glibc headers for these two defines have always been 6 and 7 instead of 4 and 5. All 64 bit applications therefore use the "wrong" values. To get these applications working without recompiling the kernel needs to accept the "wrong" values. Since the values for s390-31 are 4 and 5 the compat wrapper for fadvise64 and fadvise64_64 need to rewrite the values for 31 bit system calls. Signed-off-by: Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@de.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2003-02-03[PATCH] implement posix_fadvise64()Andrew Morton
An implementation of posix_fadvise64(). It adds 368 bytes to my vmlinux and is worth it. I didn't bother doing posix_fadvise(), as userspace can implement that by calling fadvise64(). The main reason for wanting this syscall is to provide userspace with the ability to explicitly shoot down pagecache when streaming large files. This is what O_STEAMING does, only posix_fadvise() is standards-based, and harder to use. posix_fadvise() also subsumes sys_readahead(). POSIX_FADV_WILLNEED will generally provide asynchronous readahead semantics for small amounts of I/O. As long as things like indirect blocks are aready in core. POSIX_FADV_RANDOM gives unprivileged applications a way of disabling readahead on a per-fd basis, which may provide some benefit for super-seeky access patterns such as databases. The POSIX_FADV_* values are already implemented in glibc, and this patch ensures that they are in sync. A test app (fadvise.c) is available in ext3 CVS. See http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/ext3/ for CVS details. Ulrich has reviewed this patch (thanks).