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authorNick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>2007-10-16 01:25:01 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@woody.linux-foundation.org>2007-10-16 09:42:55 -0700
commitafddba49d18f346e5cc2938b6ed7c512db18ca68 (patch)
tree4726e3d3b0e9e8e5b5d3b2b0cccb36446bbdf3ca /Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt
parent637aff46f94a754207c80c8c64bf1b74f24b967d (diff)
fs: introduce write_begin, write_end, and perform_write aops
These are intended to replace prepare_write and commit_write with more flexible alternatives that are also able to avoid the buffered write deadlock problems efficiently (which prepare_write is unable to do). [mark.fasheh@oracle.com: API design contributions, code review and fixes] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: various fixes] [dmonakhov@sw.ru: new aop block_write_begin fix] Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Mark Fasheh <mark.fasheh@oracle.com> Signed-off-by: Dmitriy Monakhov <dmonakhov@openvz.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt45
1 files changed, 45 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt
index 045f3e055a2..281c19ff7f4 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt
@@ -537,6 +537,12 @@ struct address_space_operations {
struct list_head *pages, unsigned nr_pages);
int (*prepare_write)(struct file *, struct page *, unsigned, unsigned);
int (*commit_write)(struct file *, struct page *, unsigned, unsigned);
+ int (*write_begin)(struct file *, struct address_space *mapping,
+ loff_t pos, unsigned len, unsigned flags,
+ struct page **pagep, void **fsdata);
+ int (*write_end)(struct file *, struct address_space *mapping,
+ loff_t pos, unsigned len, unsigned copied,
+ struct page *page, void *fsdata);
sector_t (*bmap)(struct address_space *, sector_t);
int (*invalidatepage) (struct page *, unsigned long);
int (*releasepage) (struct page *, int);
@@ -633,6 +639,45 @@ struct address_space_operations {
operations. It should avoid returning an error if possible -
errors should have been handled by prepare_write.
+ write_begin: This is intended as a replacement for prepare_write. The
+ key differences being that:
+ - it returns a locked page (in *pagep) rather than being
+ given a pre locked page;
+ - it must be able to cope with short writes (where the
+ length passed to write_begin is greater than the number
+ of bytes copied into the page).
+
+ Called by the generic buffered write code to ask the filesystem to
+ prepare to write len bytes at the given offset in the file. The
+ address_space should check that the write will be able to complete,
+ by allocating space if necessary and doing any other internal
+ housekeeping. If the write will update parts of any basic-blocks on
+ storage, then those blocks should be pre-read (if they haven't been
+ read already) so that the updated blocks can be written out properly.
+
+ The filesystem must return the locked pagecache page for the specified
+ offset, in *pagep, for the caller to write into.
+
+ flags is a field for AOP_FLAG_xxx flags, described in
+ include/linux/fs.h.
+
+ A void * may be returned in fsdata, which then gets passed into
+ write_end.
+
+ Returns 0 on success; < 0 on failure (which is the error code), in
+ which case write_end is not called.
+
+ write_end: After a successful write_begin, and data copy, write_end must
+ be called. len is the original len passed to write_begin, and copied
+ is the amount that was able to be copied (copied == len is always true
+ if write_begin was called with the AOP_FLAG_UNINTERRUPTIBLE flag).
+
+ The filesystem must take care of unlocking the page and releasing it
+ refcount, and updating i_size.
+
+ Returns < 0 on failure, otherwise the number of bytes (<= 'copied')
+ that were able to be copied into pagecache.
+
bmap: called by the VFS to map a logical block offset within object to
physical block number. This method is used by the FIBMAP
ioctl and for working with swap-files. To be able to swap to