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| author | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> | 2026-09-25 15:55:03 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> | 2026-09-25 15:55:03 -0700 |
| commit | 75467f60a3d14f08f86f2b353298d2826382ff23 (patch) | |
| tree | acd8a7d5b5a675042449386efa5b42ec44d8bf81 /Documentation/filesystems/ext4/bigalloc.rst | |
| download | linux-stable-75467f60a3d14f08f86f2b353298d2826382ff23.tar.gz linux-stable-75467f60a3d14f08f86f2b353298d2826382ff23.zip | |
Merge tag 'ipe-pr-20260925' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/wufan/ipegrafted
Pull IPE fixes from Fan Wu:
"Two fixes for use-after-free issues found by recent LLM-assisted code
analysis.
- move successful policy load auditing under the new policy
directory's inode lock, preventing a concurrent policy deletion
from freeing the policy while it is still being audited
- protect the dm-verity root hash with RCU, preventing policy
evaluation from racing with root hash replacement during preresume"
* tag 'ipe-pr-20260925' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/wufan/ipe:
ipe: protect the dm-verity root hash with RCU
ipe: fix use-after-free when auditing a newly loaded policy
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/filesystems/ext4/bigalloc.rst')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/filesystems/ext4/bigalloc.rst | 34 |
1 files changed, 34 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/ext4/bigalloc.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/ext4/bigalloc.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000..976a180b2 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/ext4/bigalloc.rst @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +.. 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 feature provides exactly this ability. + +The bigalloc feature (EXT4_FEATURE_RO_COMPAT_BIGALLOC) changes ext4 to +use clustered allocation, so that each bit in the ext4 block allocation +bitmap addresses a power of two number of blocks. For example, if the +file system is mainly going to be storing large files in the 4-32 +megabyte range, it might make sense to set a cluster size of 1 megabyte. +This means that each bit in the block allocation bitmap now addresses +256 4k blocks. This shrinks the total size of the block allocation +bitmaps for a 2T file system from 64 megabytes to 256 kilobytes. It also +means that a block group addresses 32 gigabytes instead of 128 megabytes, +also shrinking the amount of file system overhead for metadata. + +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. + |
