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diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/ext4/orphan.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/ext4/orphan.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000..03cca1788 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/ext4/orphan.rst @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 + +Orphan file +----------- + +In unix there can inodes that are unlinked from directory hierarchy but that +are still alive because they are open. In case of crash the filesystem has to +clean up these inodes as otherwise they (and the blocks referenced from them) +would leak. Similarly if we truncate or extend the file, we need not be able +to perform the operation in a single journalling transaction. In such case we +track the inode as orphan so that in case of crash extra blocks allocated to +the file get truncated. + +Traditionally ext4 tracks orphan inodes in a form of single linked list where +superblock contains the inode number of the last orphan inode (s_last_orphan +field) and then each inode contains inode number of the previously orphaned +inode (we overload i_dtime inode field for this). However this filesystem +global single linked list is a scalability bottleneck for workloads that result +in heavy creation of orphan inodes. When orphan file feature +(COMPAT_ORPHAN_FILE) is enabled, the filesystem has a special inode +(referenced from the superblock through s_orphan_file_inum) with several +blocks. Each of these blocks has a structure: + +============= ================ =============== =============================== +Offset Type Name Description +============= ================ =============== =============================== +0x0 Array of Orphan inode Each __le32 entry is either + __le32 entries entries empty (0) or it contains + inode number of an orphan + inode. +blocksize-8 __le32 ob_magic Magic value stored in orphan + block tail (0x0b10ca04) +blocksize-4 __le32 ob_checksum Checksum of the orphan block. +============= ================ =============== =============================== + +When a filesystem with orphan file feature is writeably mounted, we set +RO_COMPAT_ORPHAN_PRESENT feature in the superblock to indicate there may +be valid orphan entries. In case we see this feature when mounting the +filesystem, we read the whole orphan file and process all orphan inodes found +there as usual. When cleanly unmounting the filesystem we remove the +RO_COMPAT_ORPHAN_PRESENT feature to avoid unnecessary scanning of the orphan +file and also make the filesystem fully compatible with older kernels. |