> On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 07:05:33PM -0700, Jef Fox wrote: > > We are having some problems with preallocation of large files. We have > > found that we can preallocate about 500 1GB files on a volume using the > > resvsp and truncate commands, but the extents are still showing up as > > preallocated. Is this a problem? The OS appears to think the files are > > allocated and correctly sized. > > That's the way it's supposed to work. Preallocated space stays > preallocated (i.e reads as zeros) until it is written to, regardless > of whether you change the file size via truncate commands. I guess my main question is whether we (or the OS) care if the space still shows "preallocated". If we write to the files/drive/data blocks outside of RHEL (and the filesystem), does XFS care that the extents still show preallocated if we never write to them again - but only read from them? > > For reference, we are trying to create files for an external piece of > > equipment to write to a SSD with. The SSD would then be mounted in RHEL > > and the data pulled off in the 1G chunks. Because of the nature of the > > data, we need to constantly erase and recreate the files and > > preallocation seems to be the fastest option. > > What do you mean by "erase and recreate"? Do you mean you rm the > files, then preallocate them again? We were planning to TRIM/RESET out the SSD (partial or whole) and lay down the filesystem again. > If you were running 2.6.37+ and a TOT xfsprogs, there's also the > "zero" command that converts allocated space back to the > preallocated (zeroed) state without doing any IO. It's the > equivalent unresvsp + resvsp in a single operation. > > > We don't really care if > > the data gets 0'ed out. Is there another method - allocsp takes too > > long for this application? > > allocsp is historical interface, pretty much useless and should > probably be removed. I can't think of any situation where allocsp > would be better than resvsp or zero.... > > > Or, does it matter if XFS thinks the extents > > are preallocated but unwritten if no other files are written to the > > disk? So, we setup the SSDs using preallocation for speed and truncate the files so that the OS thinks the files are of a set size. We pull the drives from the system, and put them in an external device that writes to our given block offsets (staying within the files and blocks we have preallocated and defined). We then put the device back into our system to read the data back off via NFS/FTP/etc. Will it matter that XFS will still show unwritten but preallocated extents when the files actually have data? XFS/RHEL/etc will not know that the files were ever written to, but using truncate appears to give us the necessary "trick" (for lack of a better term) to get RH to think that the files are a certain size and can be read from. If we aren't adding files or reallocating data on those drives, will it matter that everything shows preallocated and not written? > I'm not sure what you are asking there... > > Cheers, > > Dave. > -- > Dave Chinner > david@xxxxxxxxxxxxx _______________________________________________ xfs mailing list xfs@xxxxxxxxxxx http://oss.sgi.com/mailman/listinfo/xfs
