On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 08:01:25PM -0400, Ming Zhang wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-04-19 at 01:29 +0200, Iustin Pop wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 07:06:32PM -0400, Ming Zhang wrote:
> > > ;) if that block is preserved already, what happen when there is a read
> > > on that LBA? read return 0 or read from preserved block?
> > >
> > > assume i write LBA 0 4KB and then ext2 preserve LBA 8-16 for this file,
> > > then a read on that will return what?
> >
> > So - you have a new file. You write 4KB at offset 0. ext2, behind your
> > back, as an optimisation, will pre-allocate space the next three blocks
> > (from 4097 to 16385).
> >
> > And now you try to read them. You will not get 0, you will not get
> > random data, you will get EOF. Simple as that - preallocation is an
> > optimisation which is transparent to the userspace. Since you did not
> > write that data, you are not able to read it. Not as 0, not as random.
>
> so one step further. if i seek to somewhere like LBA=1000, and write
> some data, then come back and read this LBA 8, what i got? not EOF
> right?
No, ignoring rounding issues (holes occur only on entire blocks), there
will be a hole between lba 8 and 1000. You will get 0 in that range.
This is mandated by posix standards. I don't know how pre-allocation
interacts with that, but you won't get random data.
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