On  5:00 27/03, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 27, 2019 at 06:00:52AM -0500, Goldwyn Rodrigues wrote:
> > On 12:10 26/03, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> > > On Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 02:02:47PM -0500, Goldwyn Rodrigues wrote:
> > > > This sets S_DAX in inode->i_flags, which can be used with
> > > > IS_DAX().
> > > > 
> > > > The dax option is restricted to non multi-device mounts.
> > > > dax interacts with the device directly instead of using bio, so
> > > > all bio-hooks which we use for multi-device cannot be performed
> > > > here. While regular read/writes could be manipulated with
> > > > RAID0/1, mmap() is still an issue.
> > > > 
> > > > Auto-setting free space tree, because dealing with free space
> > > > inode (specifically readpages) is a nightmare.
> > > > Auto-setting nodatasum because we don't get callback for writing
> > > > checksums after mmap()s.
> > > 
> > > Congratulations on getting the bear to dance.  But why?
> > 
> > Why not ? ;)
> 
>  18 files changed, 662 insertions(+), 77 deletions(-)
> 
> I want to know what advantage we're getting for that.

Direct device mmap'd files, faster access, lower pagecache usage...
all the advantages you would get from a dax device.

> 
> > > To me, the point of btrfs is all the cool stuff it does with built-in
> > > checksumming and snapshots and RAID and so on.  DAX doesn't let you do
> > > any of that, so why would somebody want to use btrfs to manage DAX?
> > 
> > There are users who are asking for advantages of dax on btrfs.
> 
> There are also people asking for perpetual motion machines.  Do these
> users understand the tradeoffs?

The only major feature they would not be able to use is
multi-device, which will be relayed at mount time.

> 
> > I have tried to make it work with snapshots in this series.
> > Checksumming should be possible, but would require some more hacks. I am
> > looking into it.
> > multi-device is an issue for mmap() and I don't think we can work around
> > it.
> > 
> > I agree there is a price to pay to use dax, but I am sure the users
> > would know about that.
> 
> I really doubt it, to be honest.

Care to elaborate?

-- 
Goldwyn

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