Re: [Ext2-devel] [PATCH] concurrent block allocation for ext2 against 2.5.64

Andreas Dilger (adilger@clusterfs.com)
Thu, 13 Mar 2003 12:44:20 -0700


On Mar 13, 2003 14:23 -0500, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 10:39:48AM -0700, Andreas Dilger wrote:
> > Sadly, we are constantly diverging the ext2/ext3 codebases. Lots of
> > features are going into ext3, but lots of fixes/improvements are only
> > going into ext2. Is ext3 holding BKL for doing journal_start() still?
> >
> > Looking at ext3_prepare_write() we grab the BKL for doing journal_start()
> > and for journal_stop(), but I don't _think_ we need BKL for journal_stop()
> > do we? We may or may not need it for the journal_data case, but that is
> > not even working right now I think.
>
> We badly need to remove the BKL from ext3; it's the source of massive
> performance problems for ext3 on larger machines.
>
> Stephen, you were telling me a week or two ago that there were some
> subtle issues involved with BKL removal from the jbd layer --- could
> you give us a quick summary of what landminds are there for whoever
> wants to try to tackle the ext3/jbd BKL removal?

Ted, as a start, we can move the (un)lock_kernel() calls from the ext3
code into the journal_start() and journal_stop(), and then continue to
push it down into the places where we need it and/or replace it with a
better lock. This not only makes the lock migration easier, but also
ensures that we always have the lock when we need it.

Cheers, Andreas

--
Andreas Dilger
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2resize/
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/

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