In the past (I think back in 4.9), Eric sent some interesting writeback hinting patches which I still carry around rebasing them with every kernel version. I'm not sure if everything is still okay with these patches or if I missed something during rebase, but my system is stable with these. Background: These patches allow processes with low IO priority to bypass the bcache and thus reduce write load on the SSD. This is useful for maintenance and backup jobs. It also ensures that such jobs won't dominate the bcache and increases the chance of keeping important data in the bcache. OTOH, important and IO sensitive processes can be made to always use the bcache even when sequential cutoff would normally read directly from the backing device bypassing bcache. I wonder if there's still activity around this? Eric seems to have been very silent AFAIT. Are there chances to get this upstream? I remember there was some discussion around this. If someone is interested, I can keep these patches rebased in a public repo - or maybe someone with more insight in bcache offers to do that. Any thoughts on this? I think, Eric made some valuable patches which allow lowering wear on SSDs. Regards, Kai
