tytso@xxxxxxx writes: > On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 08:26:49PM +0300, Dmitry Monakhov wrote: >> start_journal_io: >> + if (bufs) >> + commit_transaction->t_flushed_data_blocks = 1; >> + > > I'm not convinced this is right. > > From your test case, the problem isn't because we have journaled > metadata blocks (which is what bufs) counts, but because fsync() > depends on data blocks also getting flushed out to disks. > > However, if we aren't closing the transaction because of fsync(), I > don't think we need to do a barrier in the case of an external > journal. So instead of effectively unconditionally setting > t_flushed_data_blocks (since bufs is nearly always going to be > non-zero), I think the better fix is to test to see if the journal > device != to the fs data device in fsync(), and if so, start the > barrier operation there. > > Do you agree? Yes. BTW Would it be correct to update j_tail in jbd2_journal_commit_transaction() to something more recent if we have issued an io-barrier to j_fs_dev? This will helps to reduce journal_recovery time which may be really painful in some slow devices. I've take a look at async commit logic: fs/jbd2/commit.c void jbd2_journal_commit_transaction(journal_t *journal) { 725: /* Done it all: now write the commit record asynchronously. */ if (JBD2_HAS_INCOMPAT_FEATURE(journal, JBD2_FEATURE_INCOMPAT_ASYNC_COMMIT)) { err = journal_submit_commit_record(journal, commit_transaction, &cbh, crc32_sum); if (err) __jbd2_journal_abort_hard(journal); if (journal->j_flags & JBD2_BARRIER) blkdev_issue_flush(journal->j_dev, NULL); <<< blkdev_issue_flush is wait for barrier to complete by default, but <<< in fact we don't have to wait for barrier here. I've prepared a <<< patch wich add flags to control blkdev_issue_flush() wait <<< behavior, and this is the place for no-wait variant. ... 855: if (!err && !is_journal_aborted(journal)) err = journal_wait_on_commit_record(journal, cbh); } -- 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