From 6668ed271eaefaa63e686bdfbedaeb7b8e492722 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Kumar Kartikeya Dwivedi Date: Fri, 4 Sep 2026 10:43:19 +0200 Subject: selftests/bpf: Reject graph kptr use after RCU unlock Add a sleepable verifier test that loads a graph-node local kptr in an explicit RCU read-side critical section, then passes its node to bpf_rbtree_remove() after the section ends. Before the verifier fix, the stale NON_OWN_REF flag makes the node look like a live borrowed reference and the program is accepted. After the fix, the pointer is demoted without NON_OWN_REF and the graph kfunc argument is rejected. Also exercise a graph kptr loaded while a spin lock provides implicit RCU protection. The pointer must be invalidated when the lock is released, which guards the required ordering between non-owning-reference invalidation and RCU demotion. Update the existing fault-protected load test state description. The post-unlock pointer no longer carries NON_OWN_REF, but remains readable because the load is rewritten to use BPF_PROBE_MEM. Signed-off-by: Kumar Kartikeya Dwivedi Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20260904084325.52250-7-memxor@gmail.com Signed-off-by: Alexei Starovoitov --- Documentation/filesystems/ext4/bigalloc.rst | 34 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 34 insertions(+) create mode 100644 Documentation/filesystems/ext4/bigalloc.rst (limited to 'Documentation/filesystems/ext4/bigalloc.rst') 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. + -- cgit v1.3.1