Hi all,

I have one question about how ext2 's indirect block being write back. (I know 
ext2 is out of date but I am just starting learning).

From ext2_alloc_branch(), after it got indirect block and then it will setup 
the 'chain', during this, it will mark buffer head of indirect blocks to dirty, 
and then the inode's associated block dev will write back this dirty buffer 
head.
My question is these indirect blocks are meta data of this inode, and usually 
we should write back inode's data first and then its meta data, but here, after 
we mark buffer heads of indirect blocks and how do we make sure they will be 
written back before its data ?


ext2_alloc_branch (...)
{

                   bh = sb_getblk(inode->i_sb, new_blocks[n-1]);
                if (unlikely(!bh)) {
                        err = -ENOMEM;
                        goto failed;
                }
                branch[n].bh = bh;
                lock_buffer(bh);
                memset(bh->b_data, 0, blocksize);
                branch[n].p = (__le32 *) bh->b_data + offsets[n];
                branch[n].key = cpu_to_le32(new_blocks[n]);
                *branch[n].p = branch[n].key;
                if ( n == indirect_blks) {
                        current_block = new_blocks[n];
                        /*
                         * End of chain, update the last new metablock of
                         * the chain to point to the new allocated
                         * data blocks numbers
                         */
                        for (i=1; i < num; i++)
                                *(branch[n].p + i) = 
cpu_to_le32(++current_block);
                }
                set_buffer_uptodate(bh);
                unlock_buffer(bh);
                mark_buffer_dirty_inode(bh, inode);   
                /* We used to sync bh here if IS_SYNC(inode).
                 * But we now rely upon generic_write_sync()
                 * and b_inode_buffers.  But not for directories.
                 */

     Thanks very much.

Reply via email to