Re: [RFC PATCH] f2fs: preserve direct write semantics when buffering is forced

[Damien Le Moal <Damien.LeMoal@wdc.com>]

On Thu, 2023-03-23 at 16:46 -0700, Jaegeuk Kim wrote:
> On 03/23, Damien Le Moal wrote:
> > On Thu, 2023-03-23 at 15:14 -0700, Jaegeuk Kim wrote:
> > > On 03/20, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Feb 20, 2023 at 01:20:04PM +0100, Hans Holmberg wrote:
> > > > > A) Supporting proper direct writes for zoned block devices
> > > > > would
> > > > > be the best, but it is currently not supported (probably for
> > > > > a good but non-obvious reason). Would it be feasible to
> > > > > implement proper direct IO?
> > > > 
> > > > I don't think why not.  In many ways direct writes to zoned
> > > > devices
> > > > should be easier than non-direct writes.
> > > > 
> > > > Any comments from the maintainers why the direct I/O writes to
> > > > zoned
> > > > devices are disabled?  I could not find anything helpful in the
> > > > comments
> > > > or commit logs.
> > > 
> > > The direct IO wants to overwrite the data on the same block
> > > address,
> > > while
> > > zoned device does not support it?
> > 
> > Surely that is not the case with LFS mode, doesn't it ? Otherwise,
> > even
> > buffered overwrites would have an issue.
> 
> Zoned device only supports LFS mode.

Yes, and that was exactly my point: with LFS mode, O_DIRECT write
should never overwrite anything. So I do not see why direct writes
should be handled as buffered writes with zoned devices. Am I missing
something here ?

>