Commit e8552640 authored by Ayush Ranjan's avatar Ayush Ranjan Committed by Theodore Ts'o

ext4: add missing bigalloc documentation.

There was a broken link for bigalloc.  The page
https://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Bigalloc was not migrated into
the current documentation sources.  This patch adds the contents of
that missing page into the section for Bigalloc itself.
Signed-off-by: default avatarAyush Ranjan <ayushr2@illinois.edu>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20190831154419.GA30357@fa19-cs241-404.cs.illinois.eduSigned-off-by: default avatarTheodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
parent 6456ca65
...@@ -9,14 +9,26 @@ ext4 code is not prepared to handle the case where the block size ...@@ -9,14 +9,26 @@ ext4 code is not prepared to handle the case where the block size
exceeds the page size. However, for a filesystem of mostly huge files, exceeds the page size. However, for a filesystem of mostly huge files,
it is desirable to be able to allocate disk blocks in units of multiple it is desirable to be able to allocate disk blocks in units of multiple
blocks to reduce both fragmentation and metadata overhead. The blocks to reduce both fragmentation and metadata overhead. The
`bigalloc <Bigalloc>`__ feature provides exactly this ability. The bigalloc feature provides exactly this ability.
administrator can set a block cluster size at mkfs time (which is stored
in the s\_log\_cluster\_size field in the superblock); from then on, the The bigalloc feature (EXT4_FEATURE_RO_COMPAT_BIGALLOC) changes ext4 to
block bitmaps track clusters, not individual blocks. This means that use clustered allocation, so that each bit in the ext4 block allocation
block groups can be several gigabytes in size (instead of just 128MiB); bitmap addresses a power of two number of blocks. For example, if the
however, the minimum allocation unit becomes a cluster, not a block, file system is mainly going to be storing large files in the 4-32
even for directories. TaoBao had a patchset to extend the “use units of megabyte range, it might make sense to set a cluster size of 1 megabyte.
clusters instead of blocks” to the extent tree, though it is not clear This means that each bit in the block allocation bitmap now addresses
where those patches went-- they eventually morphed into “extent tree v2” 256 4k blocks. This shrinks the total size of the block allocation
but that code has not landed as of May 2015. bitmaps for a 2T file system from 64 megabytes to 256 kilobytes. It also
means that a block group addresses 32 gigabytes instead of 128 megabytes,
also shrinking the amount of file system overhead for metadata.
The administrator can set a block cluster size at mkfs time (which is
stored in the s\_log\_cluster\_size field in the superblock); from then
on, the block bitmaps track clusters, not individual blocks. This means
that block groups can be several gigabytes in size (instead of just
128MiB); however, the minimum allocation unit becomes a cluster, not a
block, even for directories. TaoBao had a patchset to extend the “use
units of clusters instead of blocks” to the extent tree, though it is
not clear where those patches went-- they eventually morphed into
“extent tree v2” but that code has not landed as of May 2015.
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