Re: [PATCH 2.5.68 2/2] i_size atomic access

[Andrew Morton]

Andrea Arcangeli <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Apr 24, 2003 at 06:05:03PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > And if the race _does_ hit, what is the effect?  Assuming stat() was fixed
> > with i_sem, I don't think the race has a very serious effect.  We won't
> 
> writepage needs it too to avoid returning -EIO and I doubt you want to
> take the i_sem in writepage

Well the -EIO thing is bogus really, but yes.  The writepage will not hit
disk *at all*.  That's a problem.

We modify i_size in very few places - an alternative might be to maintain a
parallel unsigned long i_size>>PAGE_CACHE_SIZE in the inode and use that in
critical places.  Sounds messy though.

Ho hum.  ugh.