Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 10 Apr 2002 16:53:19 -0400 (EDT) | From | Alexander Viro <> | Subject | Re: [prepatch] address_space-based writeback |
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On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Andrew Morton wrote:
[I'll answer to the rest when I get some sleep]
> The one thing which does worry me a bit is why __mark_inode_dirty > tests for a null ->i_sb. If the inode doesn't have a superblock > then its pages are hidden from the writeback functions. > > This is not fatal per-se. The pages are still visible to the VM > via the LRU, and presumably the filesystem knows how to sync > its own stuff. But for memory-balancing and throttling purposes, > I'd prefer that the null ->i_sb not be allowed. Where can this > occur?
In rather old kernels. IOW, these checks are atavisms - these days _all_ inodes have (constant) ->i_sb. The only way to create an in-core inode is alloc_inode(superblock) and requires superblock to be non-NULL. After that ->i_sb stays unchanged (and non-NULL) until struct inode is freed.
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