summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/Documentation/filesystems/ext4/bigalloc.rst
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2026-09-05 11:59:05 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2026-09-05 11:59:05 -0700
commit9f0346dcbea363787186c94ef94dd01aaa215afa (patch)
treeb81c168f4d0dbe4c7f4750f4598d48a6deb72094 /Documentation/filesystems/ext4/bigalloc.rst
downloadlinux-stable-9f0346dcbea363787186c94ef94dd01aaa215afa.tar.gz
linux-stable-9f0346dcbea363787186c94ef94dd01aaa215afa.zip
Merge tag 'driver-core-7.3-rc2' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/driver-core/driver-coregrafted
Pull driver core fixes from Danilo Krummrich: - Fix kernfs listxattr() not returning security xattr names (e.g. SELinux labels) when the kernfs node has no allocated kernfs_iattrs - Fix silent truncation of IRQ vector indices in the Rust PCI abstractions - Don't select OF from DRIVER_PE_KUNIT_TEST; skip the test when OF is disabled instead of silently enabling extra kernel functionality - Russ Weight is retiring from kernel development; update the Firmware Loader sysfs contact to the driver-core mailing list, add a CREDITS entry for Firmware Upload, and update MAINTAINERS accordingly * tag 'driver-core-7.3-rc2' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/driver-core/driver-core: MAINTAINERS: Remove Russ Weight from Firmware Loader CREDITS: Add CREDITS entry for Firmware Upload firmware_loader: Change contact for sysfs nodes rust: pci: reject IRQ vector indices that do not fit in u32 kernfs: preserve security xattrs without allocating iattrs drivers: base: test: DRIVER_PE_KUNIT_TEST should not select OF
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/filesystems/ext4/bigalloc.rst')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/filesystems/ext4/bigalloc.rst34
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.
+