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authorJason Gunthorpe <jgg@mellanox.com>2018-08-16 23:13:03 +0300
committerJason Gunthorpe <jgg@mellanox.com>2018-08-16 23:21:29 +0300
commit0a3173a5f09bc58a3638ecfd0a80bdbae55e123c (patch)
treed6c0bc84863cca54dfbde3b7463e5d49c82af9f1 /Documentation/filesystems/ext4/ondisk/bigalloc.rst
parent92f4e77c85918eab5e5803d7e28ab89a7e6bd3a2 (diff)
parent5c60a7389d795e001c8748b458eb76e3a5b6008c (diff)
downloadlinux-0a3173a5f09bc58a3638ecfd0a80bdbae55e123c.tar.xz
Merge branch 'linus/master' into rdma.git for-next
rdma.git merge resolution for the 4.19 merge window Conflicts: drivers/infiniband/core/rdma_core.c - Use the rdma code and revise with the new spelling for atomic_fetch_add_unless drivers/nvme/host/rdma.c - Replace max_sge with max_send_sge in new blk code drivers/nvme/target/rdma.c - Use the blk code and revise to use NULL for ib_post_recv when appropriate - Replace max_sge with max_recv_sge in new blk code net/rds/ib_send.c - Use the net code and revise to use NULL for ib_post_recv when appropriate Signed-off-by: Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@mellanox.com>
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+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+Bigalloc
+--------
+
+At the moment, the default size of a block is 4KiB, which is a commonly
+supported page size on most MMU-capable hardware. This is fortunate, as
+ext4 code is not prepared to handle the case where the block size
+exceeds the page size. However, for a filesystem of mostly huge files,
+it is desirable to be able to allocate disk blocks in units of multiple
+blocks to reduce both fragmentation and metadata overhead. The
+`bigalloc <Bigalloc>`__ feature provides exactly this ability. The
+administrator can set a block cluster size at mkfs time (which is stored
+in the s\_log\_cluster\_size field in the superblock); from then on, the
+block bitmaps track clusters, not individual blocks. This means that
+block groups can be several gigabytes in size (instead of just 128MiB);
+however, the minimum allocation unit becomes a cluster, not a block,
+even for directories. TaoBao had a patchset to extend the “use units of
+clusters instead of blocks” to the extent tree, though it is not clear
+where those patches went-- they eventually morphed into “extent tree v2”
+but that code has not landed as of May 2015.
+