Re: [PATCH] tmpfs: support SEEK_DATA and SEEK_HOLE (reprise)

[Jeff Liu]

On 11/29/2012 02:53 PM, Jim Meyering wrote:
> Jeff Liu wrote:
> 
>> On 11/29/2012 12:15 PM, Jim Meyering wrote:
>>> Hugh Dickins wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 29 Nov 2012, Jaegeuk Hanse wrote:
>>> ...
>>>>> But this time in which scenario will use it?
>>>>
>>>> I was not very convinced by the grep argument from Jim and Paul:
>>>> that seemed to be grep holding on to a no-arbitrary-limits dogma,
>>>> at the expense of its users, causing an absurd line-length issue,
>>>> which use of SEEK_DATA happens to avoid in some cases.
>>>>
>>>> The cp of sparse files from Jeff and Dave was more convincing;
>>>> but I still didn't see why little old tmpfs needed to be ahead
>>>> of the pack.
>>>>
>>>> But at LinuxCon/Plumbers in San Diego in August, a more convincing
>>>> case was made: I was hoping you would not ask, because I did not take
>>>> notes, and cannot pass on the details - was it rpm building on tmpfs?
>>>> I was convinced enough to promise support on tmpfs when support on
>>>> ext4 goes in.
>>>
>>> Re the cp-vs-sparse-file case, the current FIEMAP-based code in GNU
>>> cp is ugly and complicated enough that until recently it harbored a
>>> hard-to-reproduce data-corrupting bug[*].  Now that SEEK_DATA/SEEK_HOLE
>>> support work will work also for tmpfs and ext4, we can plan to remove
>>> the FIEMAP-based code in favor of a simpler SEEK_DATA/SEEK_HOLE-based
>>> implementation.
>> How do we teach du(1) to aware of the real disk footprint with Btrfs
>> clone or OCFS2 reflinked files if we remove the FIEMAP-based code?
>>
>> How about if we still keep it there, and introduce SEEK_DATA/SEEK_HOLE
>> code to the extent-scan module which is dedicated to deal with sparse files?
> 
> Hi Jeff,
> By "removing the FIEMAP-based code" I mean the uses in copy.c.
> All of that should remain independent of how du does its job,
> so if FIEMAP is required for your planned du enhancement,
> then feel free to use it.
Hi Jim,
Thanks for the clarification, that's fine. :)

Regards,
-Jeff
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