Re: [PATCH v3 1/7] iversion: update comments with info about atime updates

[Jeff Layton <jlayton@kernel.org>]

On Tue, 2022-08-30 at 14:32 -0400, J. Bruce Fields wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 30, 2022 at 01:02:50PM -0400, Jeff Layton wrote:
> > The fact that NFS kept this more loosely-defined is what allowed us to
> > elide some of the i_version bumps and regain a fair bit of performance
> > for local filesystems [1]. If the change attribute had been more
> > strictly defined like you mention, then that particular optimization
> > would not have been possible.
> > 
> > This sort of thing is why I'm a fan of not defining this any more
> > strictly than we require. Later on, maybe we'll come up with a way for
> > filesystems to advertise that they can offer stronger guarantees.
> 
> Yeah, the afs change-attribute-as-counter thing seems ambitious--I
> wouldn't even know how to define what exactly you're counting.
> 
> My one question is whether it'd be worth just defining the thing as
> *increasing*.  That's a lower bar.
> 

That's a very good question.

One could argue that NFSv4 sort of requires that for write delegations
anyway. All of the existing implementations that I know of do this, so
that wouldn't rule any of them out.

I'm not opposed to adding that constraint. Let me think on it a bit
more.

> (Though admittedly we don't quite manage it now--see again 1631087ba872
> "Revert "nfsd4: support change_attr_type attribute"".)
> 

Factoring the ctime into the change attr seems wrong, since a clock jump
could make it go backward. Do you remember what drove that change (see
630458e730b8) ?

It seems like if the i_version were to go backward, then the ctime
probably would too, and you'd still see a duplicate change attr.
-- 
Jeff Layton <jlayton@kernel.org>