• Tao Ma's avatar
    ext4: Fix fencepost error in chosing choosing group vs file preallocation. · cc483f10
    Tao Ma authored
    The ext4 multiblock allocator decides whether to use group or file
    preallocation based on the file size.  When the file size reaches
    s_mb_stream_request (default is 16 blocks), it changes to use a
    file-specific preallocation. This is cool, but it has a tiny problem.
    
    See a simple script:
    mkfs.ext4 -b 1024 /dev/sda8 1000000
    mount -t ext4 -o nodelalloc /dev/sda8 /mnt/ext4
    for((i=0;i<5;i++))
    do
    cat /mnt/4096>>/mnt/ext4/a	#4096 is a file with 4096 characters.
    cat /mnt/4096>>/mnt/ext4/b
    done
    debuge4fs -R 'stat a' /dev/sda8|grep BLOCKS -A 1
    
    And you get
    BLOCKS:
    (0-14):8705-8719, (15):2356, (16-19):8465-8468
    
    So there are 3 extents, a bit strange for the lonely 15th logical
    block.  As we write to the 16 blocks, we choose file preallocation in
    ext4_mb_group_or_file, but in ext4_mb_normalize_request, we meet with
    the 16*1024 range, so no preallocation will be carried. file b then
    reserves the space after '2356', so when when write 16, we start from
    another part.
    
    This patch just change the check in ext4_mb_group_or_file, so
    that for the lonely 15 we will still use group preallocation.
    After the patch, we will get:
    debuge4fs -R 'stat a' /dev/sda8|grep BLOCKS -A 1
    BLOCKS:
    (0-15):8705-8720, (16-19):8465-8468
    
    Looks more sane. Thanks.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarTao Ma <tao.ma@oracle.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatar"Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
    cc483f10
mballoc.c 126 KB