The ext4 multiblock allocator decides whether to use group or file
preallocation based on the file size. When the file size reaches
s_mb_stream_request (default is 16 blocks), it changes to use a
file-specific preallocation. This is cool, but it has a tiny problem.
See a simple script:
mkfs.ext4 -b 1024 /dev/sda8
1000000
mount -t ext4 -o nodelalloc /dev/sda8 /mnt/ext4
for((i=0;i<5;i++))
do
cat /mnt/4096>>/mnt/ext4/a #4096 is a file with 4096 characters.
cat /mnt/4096>>/mnt/ext4/b
done
debuge4fs -R 'stat a' /dev/sda8|grep BLOCKS -A 1
And you get
BLOCKS:
(0-14):8705-8719, (15):2356, (16-19):8465-8468
So there are 3 extents, a bit strange for the lonely 15th logical
block. As we write to the 16 blocks, we choose file preallocation in
ext4_mb_group_or_file, but in ext4_mb_normalize_request, we meet with
the 16*1024 range, so no preallocation will be carried. file b then
reserves the space after '2356', so when when write 16, we start from
another part.
This patch just change the check in ext4_mb_group_or_file, so
that for the lonely 15 we will still use group preallocation.
After the patch, we will get:
debuge4fs -R 'stat a' /dev/sda8|grep BLOCKS -A 1
BLOCKS:
(0-15):8705-8720, (16-19):8465-8468
Looks more sane. Thanks.
Signed-off-by: Tao Ma <tao.ma@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>