I can't think of any valid reason for ext4 to not use barriers when they are available; I believe this is necessary for filesystem integrity in the face of a volatile write cache on storage. An administrator who trusts that the cache is sufficiently battery- backed (and power supplies are sufficiently redundant, etc...) can always turn it back off again. SuSE has carried such a patch for ext3 for quite some time now. Also document the mount option while we're at it. Signed-off-by: Eric Sandeen <sandeen@xxxxxxxxxx> --- Documentation/filesystems/ext4.txt | 12 ++++++++++-- fs/ext4/super.c | 11 +++++++++-- 2 files changed, 19 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/ext4.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/ext4.txt index 560f88d..0c5086d 100644 --- a/Documentation/filesystems/ext4.txt +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/ext4.txt @@ -139,8 +139,16 @@ commit=nrsec (*) Ext4 can be told to sync all its data and metadata Setting it to very large values will improve performance. -barrier=1 This enables/disables barriers. barrier=0 disables - it, barrier=1 enables it. +barrier=<0|1(*)> This enables/disables the use of write barriers in + the jbd code. barrier=0 disables, barrier=1 enables. + This also requires an IO stack which can support + barriers, and if jbd gets an error on a barrier + write, it will disable again with a warning. + Write barriers enforce proper on-disk ordering + of journal commits, making volatile disk write caches + safe to use, at some performance penalty. If + your disks are battery-backed in one way or another, + disabling barriers may safely improve performance. orlov (*) This enables the new Orlov block allocator. It is enabled by default. diff --git a/fs/ext4/super.c b/fs/ext4/super.c index 52dd067..77b036a 100644 --- a/fs/ext4/super.c +++ b/fs/ext4/super.c @@ -671,6 +671,7 @@ static int ext4_show_options(struct seq_file *seq, struct vfsmount *vfs) unsigned long def_mount_opts; struct super_block *sb = vfs->mnt_sb; struct ext4_sb_info *sbi = EXT4_SB(sb); + journal_t *journal = sbi->s_journal; struct ext4_super_block *es = sbi->s_es; def_mount_opts = le32_to_cpu(es->s_default_mount_opts); @@ -729,8 +730,13 @@ static int ext4_show_options(struct seq_file *seq, struct vfsmount *vfs) seq_printf(seq, ",commit=%u", (unsigned) (sbi->s_commit_interval / HZ)); } - if (test_opt(sb, BARRIER)) - seq_puts(seq, ",barrier=1"); + /* + * jbd2 inherits the barrier flag from ext4, and may actually + * turn off barriers if a write fails, so it's the real test. + */ + if (!test_opt(sb, BARRIER) || + (journal && !(journal->j_flags & JBD2_BARRIER))) + seq_puts(seq, ",barrier=0"); if (test_opt(sb, NOBH)) seq_puts(seq, ",nobh"); if (!test_opt(sb, EXTENTS)) @@ -1890,6 +1896,7 @@ static int ext4_fill_super (struct super_block *sb, void *data, int silent) sbi->s_resgid = le16_to_cpu(es->s_def_resgid); set_opt(sbi->s_mount_opt, RESERVATION); + set_opt(sbi->s_mount_opt, BARRIER); /* * turn on extents feature by default in ext4 filesystem -- 1.5.3.6 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ext4" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
