Commit Graph

75 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Namhyung Kim a2cba2913c brd: get rid of unused members from struct brd_device
brd_refcnt, brd_offset, brd_sizelimit and brd_blocksize in struct
brd_device seem to be copied from struct loop_device but they're
not used anywhere. Let get rid of them.

Signed-off-by: Namhyung Kim <namhyung@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jaxboe@fusionio.com>
2011-05-26 21:06:50 +02:00
Linus Torvalds a2887097f2 Merge branch 'for-2.6.37/barrier' of git://git.kernel.dk/linux-2.6-block
* 'for-2.6.37/barrier' of git://git.kernel.dk/linux-2.6-block: (46 commits)
  xen-blkfront: disable barrier/flush write support
  Added blk-lib.c and blk-barrier.c was renamed to blk-flush.c
  block: remove BLKDEV_IFL_WAIT
  aic7xxx_old: removed unused 'req' variable
  block: remove the BH_Eopnotsupp flag
  block: remove the BLKDEV_IFL_BARRIER flag
  block: remove the WRITE_BARRIER flag
  swap: do not send discards as barriers
  fat: do not send discards as barriers
  ext4: do not send discards as barriers
  jbd2: replace barriers with explicit flush / FUA usage
  jbd2: Modify ASYNC_COMMIT code to not rely on queue draining on barrier
  jbd: replace barriers with explicit flush / FUA usage
  nilfs2: replace barriers with explicit flush / FUA usage
  reiserfs: replace barriers with explicit flush / FUA usage
  gfs2: replace barriers with explicit flush / FUA usage
  btrfs: replace barriers with explicit flush / FUA usage
  xfs: replace barriers with explicit flush / FUA usage
  block: pass gfp_mask and flags to sb_issue_discard
  dm: convey that all flushes are processed as empty
  ...
2010-10-22 17:07:18 -07:00
Arnd Bergmann 2a48fc0ab2 block: autoconvert trivial BKL users to private mutex
The block device drivers have all gained new lock_kernel
calls from a recent pushdown, and some of the drivers
were already using the BKL before.

This turns the BKL into a set of per-driver mutexes.
Still need to check whether this is safe to do.

file=$1
name=$2
if grep -q lock_kernel ${file} ; then
    if grep -q 'include.*linux.mutex.h' ${file} ; then
            sed -i '/include.*<linux\/smp_lock.h>/d' ${file}
    else
            sed -i 's/include.*<linux\/smp_lock.h>.*$/include <linux\/mutex.h>/g' ${file}
    fi
    sed -i ${file} \
        -e "/^#include.*linux.mutex.h/,$ {
                1,/^\(static\|int\|long\)/ {
                     /^\(static\|int\|long\)/istatic DEFINE_MUTEX(${name}_mutex);

} }"  \
    -e "s/\(un\)*lock_kernel\>[ ]*()/mutex_\1lock(\&${name}_mutex)/g" \
    -e '/[      ]*cycle_kernel_lock();/d'
else
    sed -i -e '/include.*\<smp_lock.h\>/d' ${file}  \
                -e '/cycle_kernel_lock()/d'
fi

Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
2010-10-05 15:01:10 +02:00
Tejun Heo 4913efe456 block: deprecate barrier and replace blk_queue_ordered() with blk_queue_flush()
Barrier is deemed too heavy and will soon be replaced by FLUSH/FUA
requests.  Deprecate barrier.  All REQ_HARDBARRIERs are failed with
-EOPNOTSUPP and blk_queue_ordered() is replaced with simpler
blk_queue_flush().

blk_queue_flush() takes combinations of REQ_FLUSH and FUA.  If a
device has write cache and can flush it, it should set REQ_FLUSH.  If
the device can handle FUA writes, it should also set REQ_FUA.

All blk_queue_ordered() users are converted.

* ORDERED_DRAIN is mapped to 0 which is the default value.
* ORDERED_DRAIN_FLUSH is mapped to REQ_FLUSH.
* ORDERED_DRAIN_FLUSH_FUA is mapped to REQ_FLUSH | REQ_FUA.

Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Boaz Harrosh <bharrosh@panasas.com>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>
Cc: Nick Piggin <npiggin@kernel.dk>
Cc: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
Cc: Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@xensource.com>
Cc: Chris Wright <chrisw@sous-sol.org>
Cc: FUJITA Tomonori <fujita.tomonori@lab.ntt.co.jp>
Cc: Geert Uytterhoeven <Geert.Uytterhoeven@sonycom.com>
Cc: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Cc: Alasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com>
Cc: Pierre Ossman <drzeus@drzeus.cx>
Cc: Stefan Weinhuber <wein@de.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jaxboe@fusionio.com>
2010-09-10 12:35:36 +02:00
Tejun Heo 6958f14545 block: kill QUEUE_ORDERED_BY_TAG
Nobody is making meaningful use of ORDERED_BY_TAG now and queue
draining for barrier requests will be removed soon which will render
the advantage of tag ordering moot.  Kill ORDERED_BY_TAG.  The
following users are affected.

* brd: converted to ORDERED_DRAIN.
* virtio_blk: ORDERED_TAG path was already marked deprecated.  Removed.
* xen-blkfront: ORDERED_TAG case dropped.

Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>
Cc: Nick Piggin <npiggin@kernel.dk>
Cc: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
Cc: Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@xensource.com>
Cc: Chris Wright <chrisw@sous-sol.org>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jaxboe@fusionio.com>
2010-09-10 12:35:36 +02:00
Arnd Bergmann 8a6cfeb6de block: push down BKL into .locked_ioctl
As a preparation for the removal of the big kernel
lock in the block layer, this removes the BKL
from the common ioctl handling code, moving it
into every single driver still using it.

Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Acked-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jaxboe@fusionio.com>
2010-08-07 18:25:00 +02:00
FUJITA Tomonori 00fff26539 block: remove q->prepare_flush_fn completely
This removes q->prepare_flush_fn completely (changes the
blk_queue_ordered API).

Signed-off-by: FUJITA Tomonori <fujita.tomonori@lab.ntt.co.jp>
Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jaxboe@fusionio.com>
2010-08-07 18:24:15 +02:00
Christoph Hellwig 7b6d91daee block: unify flags for struct bio and struct request
Remove the current bio flags and reuse the request flags for the bio, too.
This allows to more easily trace the type of I/O from the filesystem
down to the block driver.  There were two flags in the bio that were
missing in the requests:  BIO_RW_UNPLUG and BIO_RW_AHEAD.  Also I've
renamed two request flags that had a superflous RW in them.

Note that the flags are in bio.h despite having the REQ_ name - as
blkdev.h includes bio.h that is the only way to go for now.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jaxboe@fusionio.com>
2010-08-07 18:20:39 +02:00
Nick Piggin b7c335713e brd: support discard
Support discard requests in brd by zeroing or deleting the underlying backing
pages. This is simply to help with testing and documentation nature of
brd code.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
2010-06-01 11:09:20 +02:00
Tejun Heo 5a0e3ad6af include cleanup: Update gfp.h and slab.h includes to prepare for breaking implicit slab.h inclusion from percpu.h
percpu.h is included by sched.h and module.h and thus ends up being
included when building most .c files.  percpu.h includes slab.h which
in turn includes gfp.h making everything defined by the two files
universally available and complicating inclusion dependencies.

percpu.h -> slab.h dependency is about to be removed.  Prepare for
this change by updating users of gfp and slab facilities include those
headers directly instead of assuming availability.  As this conversion
needs to touch large number of source files, the following script is
used as the basis of conversion.

  http://userweb.kernel.org/~tj/misc/slabh-sweep.py

The script does the followings.

* Scan files for gfp and slab usages and update includes such that
  only the necessary includes are there.  ie. if only gfp is used,
  gfp.h, if slab is used, slab.h.

* When the script inserts a new include, it looks at the include
  blocks and try to put the new include such that its order conforms
  to its surrounding.  It's put in the include block which contains
  core kernel includes, in the same order that the rest are ordered -
  alphabetical, Christmas tree, rev-Xmas-tree or at the end if there
  doesn't seem to be any matching order.

* If the script can't find a place to put a new include (mostly
  because the file doesn't have fitting include block), it prints out
  an error message indicating which .h file needs to be added to the
  file.

The conversion was done in the following steps.

1. The initial automatic conversion of all .c files updated slightly
   over 4000 files, deleting around 700 includes and adding ~480 gfp.h
   and ~3000 slab.h inclusions.  The script emitted errors for ~400
   files.

2. Each error was manually checked.  Some didn't need the inclusion,
   some needed manual addition while adding it to implementation .h or
   embedding .c file was more appropriate for others.  This step added
   inclusions to around 150 files.

3. The script was run again and the output was compared to the edits
   from #2 to make sure no file was left behind.

4. Several build tests were done and a couple of problems were fixed.
   e.g. lib/decompress_*.c used malloc/free() wrappers around slab
   APIs requiring slab.h to be added manually.

5. The script was run on all .h files but without automatically
   editing them as sprinkling gfp.h and slab.h inclusions around .h
   files could easily lead to inclusion dependency hell.  Most gfp.h
   inclusion directives were ignored as stuff from gfp.h was usually
   wildly available and often used in preprocessor macros.  Each
   slab.h inclusion directive was examined and added manually as
   necessary.

6. percpu.h was updated not to include slab.h.

7. Build test were done on the following configurations and failures
   were fixed.  CONFIG_GCOV_KERNEL was turned off for all tests (as my
   distributed build env didn't work with gcov compiles) and a few
   more options had to be turned off depending on archs to make things
   build (like ipr on powerpc/64 which failed due to missing writeq).

   * x86 and x86_64 UP and SMP allmodconfig and a custom test config.
   * powerpc and powerpc64 SMP allmodconfig
   * sparc and sparc64 SMP allmodconfig
   * ia64 SMP allmodconfig
   * s390 SMP allmodconfig
   * alpha SMP allmodconfig
   * um on x86_64 SMP allmodconfig

8. percpu.h modifications were reverted so that it could be applied as
   a separate patch and serve as bisection point.

Given the fact that I had only a couple of failures from tests on step
6, I'm fairly confident about the coverage of this conversion patch.
If there is a breakage, it's likely to be something in one of the arch
headers which should be easily discoverable easily on most builds of
the specific arch.

Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Guess-its-ok-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <Lee.Schermerhorn@hp.com>
2010-03-30 22:02:32 +09:00
Martin K. Petersen 086fa5ff08 block: Rename blk_queue_max_sectors to blk_queue_max_hw_sectors
The block layer calling convention is blk_queue_<limit name>.
blk_queue_max_sectors predates this practice, leading to some confusion.
Rename the function to appropriately reflect that its intended use is to
set max_hw_sectors.

Also introduce a temporary wrapper for backwards compability.  This can
be removed after the merge window is closed.

Signed-off-by: Martin K. Petersen <martin.petersen@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
2010-02-26 13:58:08 +01:00
Alexey Dobriyan 83d5cde47d const: make block_device_operations const
Signed-off-by: Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-09-22 07:17:25 -07:00
Robert P. J. Day 1adbee50fd ramdisk: remove long-deprecated "ramdisk=" boot-time parameter
The "ramdisk" parameter was removed from the defunct rd.c file quite some
time ago, in favour of the more specific "ramdisk_size" parameter so, for
consistency, the same should be done here.

Signed-off-by: Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@crashcourse.ca>
Acked-by: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
2009-06-10 23:07:15 +02:00
Nick Piggin c2572f2b4f brd: fix cacheflushing
brd is missing a flush_dcache_page. On 2nd thoughts, perhaps it is the
pagecache's responsibility to flush user virtual aliases (the driver of
course should flush kernel virtual mappings)... but anyway, there
already exists cache flushing for one direction of transfer, so we
should add the other.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
2009-04-15 12:10:13 +02:00
Nick Piggin dfbc4752ea brd: support barriers
brd is always ordered (not that it matters, as it is defined not to
survive when the system goes down). So tell the block layer it is
ordered, which might be of help with testing filesystems.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
2009-04-15 12:10:13 +02:00
Al Viro 2b9ecd0333 [PATCH] switch brd
Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
2008-10-21 07:47:44 -04:00
Al Viro d4430d62fa [PATCH] beginning of methods conversion
To keep the size of changesets sane we split the switch by drivers;
to keep the damn thing bisectable we do the following:
	1) rename the affected methods, add ones with correct
prototypes, make (few) callers handle both.  That's this changeset.
	2) for each driver convert to new methods.  *ALL* drivers
are converted in this series.
	3) kill the old (renamed) methods.

Note that it _is_ a flagday; all in-tree drivers are converted and by the
end of this series no trace of old methods remain.  The only reason why
we do that this way is to keep the damn thing bisectable and allow per-driver
debugging if anything goes wrong.

New methods:
	open(bdev, mode)
	release(disk, mode)
	ioctl(bdev, mode, cmd, arg)		/* Called without BKL */
	compat_ioctl(bdev, mode, cmd, arg)
	locked_ioctl(bdev, mode, cmd, arg)	/* Called with BKL, legacy */

Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
2008-10-21 07:47:32 -04:00
Akinobu Mita c82f296601 brd: fix name argument of unregister_blkdev()
The name of brd block device is "ramdisk", it's not "brd".
(The block device is registered by register_blkdev(RAMDISK_MAJOR, "ramdisk")
So it should be unregistered by unregister_blkdev(RAMDISK_MAJOR, "ramdisk")

Signed-off-by: Akinobu Mita <akinobu.mita@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-08-20 15:40:30 -07:00
Nick Piggin efedf51c86 Add 'rd' alias to new brd ramdisk driver
Alias brd to rd in the hope of helping legacy users. Suggested by Jan.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-06-05 14:23:12 -07:00
Marcin Krol 53978d0a7a brd: don't show ramdisks in /proc/partitions
In 2.6.25, ramdisk devices show up in /proc/partitions, which is a
behaviour change from the old rd.c.  Add GENHD_FL_SUPPRESS_PARTITION_INFO,
which was present in rd.c.

All kernels prior to 2.6.25 weren't displaying ramdisks in
/proc/partitions.  Since there are many userspace tools using information
from /proc/partitions some of them may now behave incorrectly (I didn't
tested any though).  For example before 2.6.25 /proc/partitions was empty
if no block devices like hard disks and such were detected by kernel.  Now
all 16 ramdisks are always visible there.  Some software may rely on such
information (I mean, on empty /proc/partitions).

There was quite similar situation back in 2004, and ramdisks were excluded
back from displaying.  Thats why I called this a regression (maybe a bit
unfortunate).  See this patch for info:
http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.3-rc2/2.6.3-rc2-mm1/broken-out/nbd-proc-partitions-fix.patch

I also think that someone somewhere (long time ago) excluded ramdisks from
/proc/partitions for good reasons.  It is possible that now such new
"feature" is harmless, but I think there are more chances that someone
will say "hey, /proc/partitions has changed, now my software doesn't work"
then "hey where did my new 2.6.25 feature go".  nbd devices are also
excluded, maybe for very same (unknown to me) reasons.

Signed-off-by: Marcin Krol <hawk@pld-linux.org>
Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: <stable@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-05-24 09:56:11 -07:00
Laurent Vivier d7853d1f89 brd: modify ramdisk device to be able to manage partitions
This patch adds partition management for Block RAM Device (BRD).

This patch is done to keep in sync BRD and loop device drivers.

This patch adds a parameter to the module, max_part, to specify
the maximum number of partitions per RAM device.

Example:

# modprobe brd max_part=63
# ls -l /dev/ram*
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1,   0 2008-04-03 13:39 /dev/ram0
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1,  64 2008-04-03 13:39 /dev/ram1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 640 2008-04-03 13:39 /dev/ram10
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 704 2008-04-03 13:39 /dev/ram11
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 768 2008-04-03 13:39 /dev/ram12
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 832 2008-04-03 13:39 /dev/ram13
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 896 2008-04-03 13:39 /dev/ram14
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 960 2008-04-03 13:39 /dev/ram15
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 128 2008-04-03 13:39 /dev/ram2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 192 2008-04-03 13:39 /dev/ram3
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 256 2008-04-03 13:39 /dev/ram4
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 320 2008-04-03 13:39 /dev/ram5
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 384 2008-04-03 13:39 /dev/ram6
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 448 2008-04-03 13:39 /dev/ram7
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 512 2008-04-03 13:39 /dev/ram8
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 576 2008-04-03 13:39 /dev/ram9
# fdisk /dev/ram0
Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel
Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only,
until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous
content won't be recoverable.

Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

Command (m for help): o
Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only,
until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous
content won't be recoverable.

Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

Command (m for help): n
Command action
   e   extended
   p   primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-2, default 1): 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-2, default 2): 2

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.
# ls -l /dev/ram0*
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 0 2008-04-03 13:40 /dev/ram0
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 1 2008-04-03 13:40 /dev/ram0p1
# mkfs /dev/ram0p1
mke2fs 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=1024 (log=0)
Fragment size=1024 (log=0)
4016 inodes, 16032 blocks
801 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=1
Maximum filesystem blocks=16515072
2 block groups
8192 blocks per group, 8192 fragments per group
2008 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
	8193

Writing inode tables: done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

This filesystem will be automatically checked every 26 mounts or
180 days, whichever comes first.  Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.
# mount /dev/ram0p1 /mnt
df /mnt
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/ram0p1              15521       138     14582   1% /mnt
# ls -l /mnt
total 12
drwx------ 2 root root 12288 2008-04-03 13:41 lost+found
# umount /mnt
# rmmod brd

Signed-off-by: Laurent Vivier <Laurent.Vivier@bull.net>
Acked-by: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
Cc: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-04-30 08:29:53 -07:00
Jared Hulbert 30afcb4bd2 return pfn from direct_access, for XIP
Alter the block device ->direct_access() API to work with the new
get_xip_mem() API (that requires both kaddr and pfn are returned).

Some architectures will not do the right thing in their virt_to_page() for use
by XIP (to translate from the kernel virtual address returned by
direct_access(), to a user mappable pfn in XIP's page fault handler.

However, we can't switch it to just return the pfn and not the kaddr, because
we have no good way to get a kva from a pfn, and XIP requires the kva for its
read(2) and write(2) handlers.  So we have to return both.

Signed-off-by: Jared Hulbert <jaredeh@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: Carsten Otte <cotte@de.ibm.com>
Cc: Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@de.ibm.com>
Cc: linux-mm@kvack.org
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-04-28 08:58:23 -07:00
Petr Tesarik 26defe34e4 fix brd allocation flags
While looking at the implementation of the Ram backed block device
driver, I stumbled across a write-only local variable, which makes
little sense, so I assume it should actually work like this:

Signed-off-by: Petr Tesarik <ptesarik@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-04-22 13:38:03 -07:00
Nick Piggin 75acb9cd2e rd: support XIP
Support direct_access XIP method with brd.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-02-08 09:22:30 -08:00
Nick Piggin 9db5579be4 rewrite rd
This is a rewrite of the ramdisk block device driver.

The old one is really difficult because it effectively implements a block
device which serves data out of its own buffer cache.  It relies on the dirty
bit being set, to pin its backing store in cache, however there are non
trivial paths which can clear the dirty bit (eg.  try_to_free_buffers()),
which had recently lead to data corruption.  And in general it is completely
wrong for a block device driver to do this.

The new one is more like a regular block device driver.  It has no idea about
vm/vfs stuff.  It's backing store is similar to the buffer cache (a simple
radix-tree of pages), but it doesn't know anything about page cache (the pages
in the radix tree are not pagecache pages).

There is one slight downside -- direct block device access and filesystem
metadata access goes through an extra copy and gets stored in RAM twice.
However, this downside is only slight, because the real buffercache of the
device is now reclaimable (because we're not playing crazy games with it), so
under memory intensive situations, footprint should effectively be the same --
maybe even a slight advantage to the new driver because it can also reclaim
buffer heads.

The fact that it now goes through all the regular vm/fs paths makes it
much more useful for testing, too.

   text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
   2837     849     384    4070     fe6 drivers/block/rd.o
   3528     371      12    3911     f47 drivers/block/brd.o

Text is larger, but data and bss are smaller, making total size smaller.

A few other nice things about it:
- Similar structure and layout to the new loop device handlinag.
- Dynamic ramdisk creation.
- Runtime flexible buffer head size (because it is no longer part of the
  ramdisk code).
- Boot / load time flexible ramdisk size, which could easily be extended
  to a per-ramdisk runtime changeable size (eg. with an ioctl).
- Can use highmem for the backing store.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix build]
[byron.bbradley@gmail.com: make rd_size non-static]
Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Byron Bradley <byron.bbradley@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-02-08 09:22:30 -08:00