Re: [PATCHSET block#for-2.6.36-post] block: replace barrier with sequenced flush

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Tejun Heo, on 08/12/2010 04:41 PM wrote:
Each filesystem needs to be updated to enforce request
ordering themselves and then to use REQ_FLUSH/FUA mechanism.

I generally agree with the patchset, but I believe this particular move is a really bad move.

I'm not mentioning the obvious that a common functionality (enforcing requests ordering in this case) should be handled by a common library, but not internally by a zillion file systems Linux has.

The worst in this move is that it would hide all the requests ordering semantic inside file systems in, most likely, a very much unclear way. That would lead that if I or someone else decide to implement the "hardware offload" of requests ordering (ORDERED requests), I or he/she would not be able to see any improvement until at least one file system be changed to be able to use it. Worse, if the implementor can't demonstrate the improvement, how can he encourage file systems developers to update their file systems? Which, basically, would mean that only a person with *BOTH* deep storage and file systems internals knowledge can do the job. How many do you know such people? Both storage and file systems topics are very wide and tricky, so nearly always people specialize in one of them, not both.

Thus, this move would basically mean that the proper ordered queuing would probably never be implemented in Linux.

I believe, much better would be to create a common interface, which file systems would use to enforce requests order, when they need it.

Advantages of this approach:

1. The ordering requirements of file systems would be clear.

2. They would be handled in one place by a common code.

3. Any storage level expert can try to implement ordered queuing without a deep dive into file systems design and implementation.

I already suggested such interface in http://marc.info/?l=linux-scsi&m=128077574815881&w=2. Internally for the moment it can be implemented using existing REQ_FLUSH/FUA/etc. and waiting for all the requests in the group to finish. As a nice side effect, if a device doesn't support FUA, it would be possible to issue SYNC_CACHE command(s) only for required blocks, not for the whole device as it is done now.

If requested, I can develop the interface further.

Vlad
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