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  • Theodore Ts'o's avatar
    ext4: allocate delayed allocation blocks before rename · 0e202704
    Theodore Ts'o authored
    
    
    When ext4_rename() overwrites an already existing file, call
    ext4_alloc_da_blocks() before starting the journal handle which
    actually does the rename, instead of doing this afterwards.  This
    improves the likelihood that the contents will survive a crash if an
    application replaces a file using the sequence:
    
    1)  write replacement contents to foo.new
    2)  <omit fsync of foo.new>
    3)  rename foo.new to foo
    
    It is still not a guarantee, since ext4_alloc_da_blocks() is *not*
    doing a file integrity sync; this means if foo.new is a very large
    file, it may not be completely flushed out to disk.
    
    However, for files smaller than a megabyte or so, any dirty pages
    should be flushed out before we do the rename operation, and so at the
    next journal commit, the CACHE FLUSH command will make sure al of
    these pages are safely on the disk platter.
    
    Signed-off-by: default avatar"Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
    0e202704