Hi, since it has been a while from my last post, I have rebased patches to cleanly apply to the newest kernel. Also there have been some changes regarding blkdev_issue_discard() and its helpers, I have changed patches to use the new helper (ext4_issue_discard() for ext4) and new format of sb_issue_discard() (in ext3). Also in order to give the user better control over the discard I have changed FITRIM ioctl to return the exact amount of discarded Bytes, so the user will know how much space has been reclaimed to wear-leveling. SHORT DESCRIPTION: ================== Batched discard adds ability to discard free space on mounded filesystem, in order to avoid using current discard implementation which discards recently freed blocks. This approach may on some devices (it depends on how efficient is the device wear-leveling algorithm) result in huge performance loss. Batched discard can be invoked from user-space through FITRIM ioctl on the whole, or just a part, of file system. With this approach we are searching for continuous free blocks bigger than defined through ioctl to discard them. So, since we are searching for big continuous extents it is much more efficient than current approach and it gives user fine grained control over how much disk space will be reclaimed for wear-leveling and what impact will it have on performance. I have attached source code for example application which uses FITRIM to discard just a part or whole filesystem. Since FITRIM is filesystem independent ioctl it can be used by any filesystem which supports it. Usage: fstrim [-s start] [-l length] [-m minimum-extent] [-v] directory -s Starting Byte to discard from -l Number of Bytes to discard from the start -m Minimum extent length to discard -v Verbose - prints out number of really discarded Bytes --- a1edaf3 ext3: Add batched discard support 4ed7168 ext4: Add batched discard support 88f8c20 Add ioctl FITRIM. fs/ext3/balloc.c | 251 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ fs/ext3/super.c | 1 + fs/ext4/ext4.h | 2 + fs/ext4/mballoc.c | 191 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ fs/ext4/super.c | 1 + fs/ioctl.c | 39 +++++++ include/linux/ext3_fs.h | 1 + include/linux/fs.h | 2 + 8 files changed, 488 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) -- 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