ext4: optimize file overwrites

In case if the file already has underlying blocks/extents allocated
then we don't need to start a journal txn and can directly return
the underlying mapping. Currently ext4_iomap_begin() is used by
both DAX & DIO path. We can check if the write request is an
overwrite & then directly return the mapping information.

This could give a significant perf boost for multi-threaded writes
specially random overwrites.
On PPC64 VM with simulated pmem(DAX) device, ~10x perf improvement
could be seen in random writes (overwrite). Also bcoz this optimizes
away the spinlock contention during jbd2 slab cache allocation
(jbd2_journal_handle). On x86 VM, ~2x perf improvement was observed.

Reported-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Ritesh Harjani <riteshh@linux.ibm.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/88e795d8a4d5cd22165c7ebe857ba91d68d8813e.1600401668.git.riteshh@linux.ibm.com
Signed-off-by: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>

1 files changed, 15 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/fs/ext4/inode.c b/fs/ext4/inode.c
index f1ee0229ac12..f81f45f5db73 100644
--- a/fs/ext4/inode.c
+++ b/fs/ext4/inode.c
@@ -3436,14 +3436,26 @@ static int ext4_iomap_begin(struct inode *inode, loff_t offset, loff_t length,
 	map.m_len = min_t(loff_t, (offset + length - 1) >> blkbits,
 			  EXT4_MAX_LOGICAL_BLOCK) - map.m_lblk + 1;
 
-	if (flags & IOMAP_WRITE)
+	if (flags & IOMAP_WRITE) {
+		/*
+		 * We check here if the blocks are already allocated, then we
+		 * don't need to start a journal txn and we can directly return
+		 * the mapping information. This could boost performance
+		 * especially in multi-threaded overwrite requests.
+		 */
+		if (offset + length <= i_size_read(inode)) {
+			ret = ext4_map_blocks(NULL, inode, &map, 0);
+			if (ret > 0 && (map.m_flags & EXT4_MAP_MAPPED))
+				goto out;
+		}
 		ret = ext4_iomap_alloc(inode, &map, flags);
-	else
+	} else {
 		ret = ext4_map_blocks(NULL, inode, &map, 0);
+	}
 
 	if (ret < 0)
 		return ret;
-
+out:
 	ext4_set_iomap(inode, iomap, &map, offset, length);
 
 	return 0;