On May 09, 2007  21:31 +0530, Amit K. Arora wrote:

2) For FA_UNALLOCATE mode, should the file system allow unallocation
   of normal (non-preallocated) blocks (blocks allocated via
   regular write/truncate operations) also (i.e. work as punch()) ?
   - Though FA_UNALLOCATE mode is yet to be implemented on ext4, still
     we need to finalize on the convention here as a general guideline
     to all the filesystems that implement fallocate.

I would only allow this on FA_ALLOCATE extents.  That means it won't be
possible to do this for filesystems that don't understand unwritten
extents unless there are blocks allocated beyond EOF.

3) If above is true, the file size will need to be changed
   for "unallocation" when block holding the EOF gets unallocated.
   - If we do not "unallocate" normal (non-preallocated) blocks and we
     do not change the file size on preallocation, then this is a
     non-issue.

Not necessarily.  That will just make the file sparse.  If FA_ALLOCATE
does not change the file size, why should FA_UNALLOCATE.

4) Should we update mtime & ctime on a successfull allocation/
   unallocation ?

I would say yes.  If glibc does the fallback fallocate via write() the
mtime/ctime will be updated, so it makes sense to be consistent for
both methods.  Also, it just makes sense from the "this file was modified"
point of view.

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
Principal Software Engineer
Cluster File Systems, Inc.