Re: [PATCH v6 3/3] xfs: add support for FALLOC_FL_WRITE_ZEROES
From: Pankaj Raghav (Samsung) <hidden>
Date: 2026-06-17 09:45:38
Also in:
linux-fsdevel, linux-xfs
On Tue, Jun 16, 2026 at 06:31:40AM -0700, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
[API questions for Zhang and -fsdevel/ -api below)quoted
+ unsigned int blksize = i_blocksize(inode); + loff_t offset_aligned = round_down(offset, blksize);I think this actually needs to found up instead of rounding down.quoted
+ /* + * Zero the tail of the old EOF block and any space up to the new + * offset. + * In the usual truncate path, xfs_falloc_setsize takes care of + * zeroing those blocks. + */ + if (offset_aligned > old_size) { + trace_xfs_zero_eof(ip, old_size, offset_aligned - old_size); + error = xfs_zero_range(ip, old_size, offset_aligned - old_size, + NULL, &did_zero); + if (error) + return error; + }... then this will properly zero from the old i_size to the first block boundary after the old size.
Hmm, right now we do this:
|----------|----------|----------|
^ ^ ^ ^
| | | |
old_size | offset |
| |
off_rd off_ru
At the moment, we zero out old_size to off_rd and pass offset to
xfs_alloc_file_space. xfs_alloc_file_space rounds down the offset to off_rd.
What you are proposing is to zero out old_size to off_ru, and pass
off_ru to xfs_alloc_file_space. I don't exactly understand the
difference.
quoted
+ error = xfs_alloc_file_space(ip, offset, len, + XFS_ALLOC_FILE_SPACE_WRITE_ZEROES);... and here we need to pass offset_aligned instead of offset and a new calculated len based on the last block boundary, and then zero again after that. That is assuming FALLOC_FL_WRITE_ZEROES allows unaligned ranges for file systems. The block code doesn't, but I can't quite follow the ext4 code if it does or not, and there is no mention of FALLOC_FL_WRITE_ZEROES even in the latest man-pages tree.
I can't find any references to FALLOC_FL_WRITE_ZEROES in the man pages master branch. Maybe we missed it. I can send a separate patch for that once we have some clarity on the API.
Maybe we also want xfstests that try unaligned FALLOC_FL_WRITE_ZEROES and make sure no existing data before the range is lost and the entire range is zeroed?
I added FALLOC_FL_WRITE_ZEROES support to ltp (both fsx and fsstress). For example, generic/363 tests for unaligned writes and checks for any stale data. By default, I think we do unaligned reads, writes and truncate in fsx.
quoted
+ if (error) + return error; + + /* + * xfs_falloc_setsize() would re-zero the written extents via + * iomap_zero_range(). Use xfs_setfilesize() instead. + * Update in-core i_size first as xfs_setfilesize() clamps the on-disk + * size to it. + */ + if (new_size > i_size_read(inode)) + i_size_write(inode, new_size);I think Sashiko is right that we need a pagecache_isize_extended and filemap_write_and_wait_range calls here.
Ok. Current fsx or fsstress did not expose this problem. I will look into this. Thanks Christoph. -- Pankaj