Linux-kernel mailing list archive 2000-53,: Re: [RFC] Generic deferred file writing

# Re: [RFC] Generic deferred file writing

Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
Sun, 31 Dec 2000 13:32:38 -0800 (PST)

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On Sun, 31 Dec 2000, Roman Zippel wrote:
>
> On Sun, 31 Dec 2000, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> > Let me repeat myself one more time:
> >
> > I do not believe that "get_block()" is as big of a problem as people make
> > it out to be.
>
> The real problem is that get_block() doesn't scale and it's very hard to
> do. A recursive per inode-semaphore might help, but it's still a pain to
> get it right.

Not true.

There's nothing unscalable in get_block() per se. The only lock we hold is
the per-page lock, which we must hold anyway. get_block() itself does not
need any real locking: you can do it with a simple per-inode spinlock if
you want to (and release the spinlock and try again if you need to fetch
non-cached data blocks).

Sure, the current ext2 _implementation_ sucks. Nobody has ever contested
that.

Stop re-designing something just because you want to.

Linus

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