Some of the in-kernel ext3 block variable type are treated as signed 4 bytes int type, thus limited ext3 filesystem to 8TB (4kblock size based). While trying to fix them, it seems quite confusing in the ext3 code where some blocks are filesystem-wide blocks, some are group relative offsets that need to be signed value (as -1 has special meaning). So it seem saner to define two types of physical blocks: one is filesystem wide blocks, another is group-relative blocks. The following patches clarify these two types of blocks in the ext3 code, and fix the type bugs which limit current 32 bit ext3 filesystem limit to 8TB. With this series of patches and the percpu counter data type changes in the mm tree, we are able to extend exts filesystem limit to 16TB. This work is also a pre-request for the recent >32 bit ext3 work, and makes the kernel to able to address 48 bit ext3 block a lot easier: Simply redefine ext3_fsblk_t from unsigned long to sector_t and redefine the format string for ext3 filesystem block corresponding. Two RFC with a series patches have been posted to ext2-devel list and have been reviewed and discussed: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=ext2-devel&m=114722190816690&w=2 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=ext2-devel&m=114784919525942&w=2 The following patches are updated and intergreated patches from two RFC posted previous: [Patch 1]ext3_fsblk_t, ext3_grpblk_t and type fixes. defines ext3_fsblk_t and ext3_grpblk_t, and the printk format string for filesystem wide blocks. This patch classifies all block group relative blocks, and ext3_fsblk_t blocks occurs in the same function where used to be confusing before. Also include kernel bug fixes for filesystem wide in-kernel block variables. There are some fileystem wide blocks are treated as int/unsigned int type in the kernel currently, especially in ext3 block allocation and reservation code. This patch fixed those bugs by converting those variables to ext3_fsblk_t(unsigned long) type. [Patch 2] Convert the ext3 in-kernel filesystem blocks to ext3_fsblk_t. Convert the rest of all unsigned long type in-kernel filesystem blocks to ext3_fsblk_t, and replace the printk format string respondingly. Patches are tested on both 32 bit machine and 64 bit machine, <8TB ext3 and >8TB ext3 filesystem(with the latest to be released e2fsprogs-1.39). Tests includes overnight fsx, tiobench, dbench and fsstress. Patches are appliable to 2.6.17-rc4-mm3, also applied to 2.6.17-rc4 kernel(need to apply percpu counter changes to support >31 bit ext3 free blocks counters. 2.6.17-rc4 version of percpu cpu counter data type change patch could be found at: http://ext2.sourceforge.net/48bitext3/patches/patches-2.6.17-rc4-05242006/percpu_counter_longlong.patch Signed-Off-By: Mingming Cao <cmm@xxxxxxxxxx> - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html