Re: [PATCH] SMP race in ext2 - metadata corruption.

[Richard Gooch]

Linus Torvalds writes:
> Now, if you want to speed up accesses, there are things you can
> do. You can lay out the filesystem in the access order - trace the
> IO accesses at bootup ("which file, which offset, which metadata
> block?") and lay out the blocks of the files in exactly the right
> order. Then you will get linear reads _without_ doing any "dd" at
> all.

A year ago I came up with an alternative approach for cache warming,
but I see that it wouldn't work with our current infrastructure.
However, maybe there is still a way to use the basic technique. If so,
please make suggestions.

The idea I had (motivated by the desire to eliminate random disc
seeks, which is the limiting factor in how fast my boxes boot) was:

- init(8) issues an ioctl(2) on the root FS block device which turns
  on recording of block reads (it records block numbers)

- at the end of the bootup process, init(8) issues another ioctl(2) to
  grab the buffered block numbers, and turn off recording

- init(8) then sorts this list in ascending order and saves the result
  in a file

- next boot, init(8) checks the file, and if it exists, opens the root
  FS block device and reads in each block listed in the file. The
  effect is to warm the buffer cache extremely quickly. The head will
  move in one direction, grabbing data as it flys by. I expect this
  will take around 1 second

- init(8) now continues the boot process (starting the magic ioctl(2)
  again so as to get a fresh list of blocks, in case something has
  changed)

- booting is now super fast, thanks to no disc activity.

The advantage of this scheme over blindly reading the first 50 MB is
that it only reads in what you *need*, and thus will work better on
low memory systems. It's also useful for other applications, not just
speeding up the boot process.

However, doing an ioctl(2) on the block device won't help. So the
question is, where to add the hook? One possibility is the FS, and
record inum,bnum pairs. But of course we don't have a way of accessing
via inum in user-space. So that's no good. Besides, we want to get
block numbers on the block device, because that's the only meaningful
number to resort.

So, what, then? Some kind of hook on the page cache? Ideas?

				Regards,

					Richard....
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