Re: [PATCH 1/5][TAKE3] fallocate() implementation on i86, x86_64 and powerpc

[Dave Kleikamp <shaggy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2007-05-16 at 13:16 +1000, David Chinner wrote:
> On Wed, May 16, 2007 at 01:33:59AM +0530, Amit K. Arora wrote:

> > Following changes were made to the previous version:
> >  1) Added description before sys_fallocate() definition.
> >  2) Return EINVAL for len<=0 (With new draft that Ulrich pointed to,
> >     posix_fallocate should return EINVAL for len <= 0.
> >  3) Return EOPNOTSUPP if mode is not one of FA_ALLOCATE or FA_DEALLOCATE
> >  4) Do not return ENODEV for dirs (let individual file systems decide if
> >     they want to support preallocation to directories or not.
> >  5) Check for wrap through zero.
> >  6) Update c/mtime if fallocate() succeeds.
> 
> Please don't make this always happen. c/mtime updates should be dependent
> on the mode being used and whether there is visible change to the file. If no
> userspace visible changes to the file occurred, then timestamps should not
> be changed.

i_blocks will be updated, so it seems reasonable to update ctime.  mtime
shouldn't be changed, though, since the contents of the file will be
unchanged.

> e.g. FA_ALLOCATE that changes file size requires same semantics of ftruncate()
> extending the file, otherwise no change in timestamps should occur.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Dave.
-- 
David Kleikamp
IBM Linux Technology Center