• Andrew Morton's avatar
    [PATCH] Add a sync_fs super_block operation · 75f19a40
    Andrew Morton authored
    This is infrastructure for fixing the journalled-data ext3 unmount data
    loss problem. It was sent for comment to linux-fsdevel a week ago; there
    was none.
    
    Add a `sync_fs' superblock operation whose mandate is to perform
    filesystem-specific operations to ensure a successful sync.
    
    It is called in two places:
    
    1: fsync_super() - for umount.
    
    2: sys_sync() - for global sync.
    
    In the sys_sync() case we call all the ->write_super() methods first.
    write_super() is an async flushing operation.  It should not block.
    
    After that, we call all the ->sync_fs functions.  This is independent
    of the state of s_dirt!  That was all confused up before, and in this
    patch ->write_super() and ->sync_fs() are quite separate.
    
    With ext3 as an example, the initial ->write_super() will start a
    transaction, but will not wait on it.  (But only if s_dirt was set!)
    
    The first ->sync_fs() call will get the IO underway.
    
    The second ->sync_fs() call will wait on the IO.
    
    And we really do need to be this elaborate, because all the testing of
    s_dirt in there makes ->write_super() an unreliable way of detecting
    when the VFS is trying to sync the filesystem.
    75f19a40
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