lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2003]   [Dec]   [11]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
From
SubjectRe: Is there a "make hole" (truncate in middle) syscall?
Date
On Thursday 11 December 2003 13:48, Jörn Engel wrote:
> On Thu, 11 December 2003 11:15:28 -0800, Hua Zhong wrote:
> > > The abstract interface for make_hole() is simple, but it turns into a
> > > pretty expensive filesystem operation, I think. After many cycles of
> > > free/allocate, your file would be badly fragmented across the
> > > filesystem.
> >
> > Understood. Two filesystems we are using: tmpfs and ext3. For the
> > former, fragmentation doesn't matter.
> >
> > Hey, I think when I get some cycles I can try to implement this for
> > tmpfs (since it's simpler) myself, and post a patch. :-) But before
> > that, I want to make sure it's doable.
>
> If you really do it, please don't add a syscall for it. Simply check
> each written page if it is completely filled with zero. (This will be
> a very quick check for most pages, as they will contain something
> nonzero in the first couple of words)

Cache poisoning, streaming writes to large RAID arrays... There are about 8
zllion reasons not to do this. Really. (It defeats the whole purpose of
DMA, doesn't it?)

> Jörn

Rob
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2005-03-22 13:59    [W:0.107 / U:0.364 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site