The patch titled ext4: fdatasync should skip metadata writeout when overwriting has been removed from the -mm tree. Its filename was ext4-fdatasync-should-skip-metadata-writeout-when-overwriting.patch This patch was dropped because it was merged into mainline or a subsystem tree The current -mm tree may be found at http://userweb.kernel.org/~akpm/mmotm/ ------------------------------------------------------ Subject: ext4: fdatasync should skip metadata writeout when overwriting From: Hisashi Hifumi <hifumi.hisashi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Currently fdatasync is identical to fsync in ext3. I think fdatasync should skip journal flush in data=ordered and data=writeback mode when it overwrites to already-instantiated blocks on HDD. When I_DIRTY_DATASYNC flag is not set, fdatasync should skip journal writeout because this indicates only atime or/and mtime updates. Following patch is the same approach of ext2's fsync code(ext2_sync_file). I did a performance test using the sysbench. #sysbench --num-threads=128 --max-requests=50000 --test=fileio --file-total-size=128G --file-test-mode=rndwr --file-fsync-mode=fdatasync run The result on ext3 was: -2.6.24 Operations performed: 0 Read, 50080 Write, 59600 Other = 109680 Total Read 0b Written 782.5Mb Total transferred 782.5Mb (12.116Mb/sec) 775.45 Requests/sec executed Test execution summary: total time: 64.5814s total number of events: 50080 total time taken by event execution: 3713.9836 per-request statistics: min: 0.0000s avg: 0.0742s max: 0.9375s approx. 95 percentile: 0.2901s Threads fairness: events (avg/stddev): 391.2500/23.26 execution time (avg/stddev): 29.0155/1.99 -2.6.24-patched Operations performed: 0 Read, 50009 Write, 61596 Other = 111605 Total Read 0b Written 781.39Mb Total transferred 781.39Mb (16.419Mb/sec) 1050.83 Requests/sec executed Test execution summary: total time: 47.5900s total number of events: 50009 total time taken by event execution: 2934.5768 per-request statistics: min: 0.0000s avg: 0.0587s max: 0.8938s approx. 95 percentile: 0.1993s Threads fairness: events (avg/stddev): 390.6953/22.64 execution time (avg/stddev): 22.9264/1.17 Filesystem I/O throughput was improved. Signed-off-by :Hisashi Hifumi <hifumi.hisashi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx> Cc: <linux-ext4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- fs/ext4/fsync.c | 3 +++ 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+) diff -puN fs/ext4/fsync.c~ext4-fdatasync-should-skip-metadata-writeout-when-overwriting fs/ext4/fsync.c --- a/fs/ext4/fsync.c~ext4-fdatasync-should-skip-metadata-writeout-when-overwriting +++ a/fs/ext4/fsync.c @@ -72,6 +72,9 @@ int ext4_sync_file(struct file * file, s goto out; } + if (datasync && !(inode->i_state & I_DIRTY_DATASYNC)) + goto out; + /* * The VFS has written the file data. If the inode is unaltered * then we need not start a commit. _ Patches currently in -mm which might be from hifumi.hisashi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx are fix-invalidate_inode_pages2_range-to-not-clear-ret.patch fix-invalidate_inode_pages2_range-to-not-clear-ret-checkpatch-fixes.patch ext3-fdatasync-should-skip-metadata-writeout-when-overwriting.patch - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe mm-commits" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html