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| author | Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org> | 2026-08-14 15:43:51 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org> | 2026-08-14 15:43:51 -0700 |
| commit | 9cc63f8bcd560c760d0b12e15bba8f81c86237cf (patch) | |
| tree | 3b5269b1bcf6714171754946367c51e0590f64da /Documentation/filesystems/ext4/bigalloc.rst | |
| download | linux-stable-9cc63f8bcd560c760d0b12e15bba8f81c86237cf.tar.gz linux-stable-9cc63f8bcd560c760d0b12e15bba8f81c86237cf.zip | |
Merge branches 'expcb.2026.07.24a', 'misc.2026.07.30a', 'rcu-tasks.2026.07.30a', 'srcu.2026.08.11a' and 'torture.2026.08.14a' into HEADgrafted
Changes:
Make expedited grace periods expedite normal RCU callbacks
Miscellaneous fixes:
* Improve diagnostic output with character task states.
* Mark accesses to inform KCSAN of concurrency design.
* Move from kmalloc() to kmalloc_obj().
* Documentation updates.
* Improve handling of RCU deferred quiescent states.
* Clean up unused function arguments and structure fields.
* Reduce show_rcu_gp_kthreads() stack space.
Tasks RCU updates:
* Clean up after SRCU re-implementation of Tasks Trace RCU.
* Mark accesses to inform KCSAN of concurrency design.
* Add ->lazy_timer status to diagnostic output.
* Remove an unnecessary memory barrier.
* Fix a data race, courtesy of KCSAN.
* Documentation updates.
* Convert cond_resched_tasks_rcu_qs() from macro to static inline
function.
SRCU updates:
* Add Rust helpers for SRCU.
* Avoid losing queued work at cleanup_srcu_struct() time.
Torture-test updates:
* Preparation work for immediate RCU priority deboosting.
* Test RCU readers from real interrupt handlers (as opposed to softirq).
* Simplify code through use of cpumask_next_wrap().
* Improve diagnostic output with character task states.
* Add rcutorture.nwriters parameter to allow lightweight stall testing,
and rcutorture.stall_only to make doing so easier.
* Test an RCU Tasks Trace grace period implying an RCU grace period.
* Make RCU Tasks Trace torturing track reader batches.
* Fix a data race, courtesy of KCSAN.
* Plug a shuffle_tmp_mask memory leak on kthread spawn failure.
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. + |
