On Wed, 26 Feb 2014, Dave Chinner wrote: > On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 08:45:15PM -0800, Hugh Dickins wrote: > > On Wed, 26 Feb 2014, Dave Chinner wrote: > > > On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 03:23:35PM -0800, Hugh Dickins wrote: > > > > > > > I should mention that when "we" implemented this thirty years ago, > > > > we had a strong conviction that the system call should be idempotent: > > > > that is, the len argument should indicate the final i_size, not the > > > > amount being removed from it. Now, I don't remember the grounds for > > > > that conviction: maybe it was just an idealistic preference for how > > > > to design a good system call. I can certainly see that defining it > > > > that way round would surprise many app programmers. Just mentioning > > > > this in case anyone on these lists sees a practical advantage to > > > > doing it that way instead. > > > > > > I don't see how specifying the end file size as an improvement. What > > > happens if you are collapse a range in a file that is still being > > > appended to by the application and so you race with a file size > > > update? IOWs, with such an API the range to be collapsed is > > > completely unpredictable, and IMO that's a fundamentally broken API. > > > > That's fine if you don't see the idempotent API as an improvement, > > I just wanted to put it on the table in case someone does see an > > advantage to it. But I think I'm missing something in your race > > example: I don't see a difference between the two APIs there. > > > Userspace can't sample the inode size via stat(2) and then use the value for a > syscall atomically. i.e. if you specify the offset you want to > collapse at, and the file size you want to have to define the region > to collapse, then the length you need to collapse is (current inode > size - end file size). If "current inode size" can change between > the stat(2) and fallocate() call (and it can), then the length being > collapsed is indeterminate.... Thanks for explaining more, I was just about to acknowledge what a good example that is. Indeed, it seems not unreasonable to be editing the earlier part of a file while the later part of it is still streaming in. But damn, it now occurs to me that there's still a problem at the streaming end: its file write offset won't be updated to reflect the collapse, so there would be a sparse hole at that end. And collapse returns -EPERM if IS_APPEND(inode). Never mind, I'm not campaigning for a change of interface anyway. Hugh -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>