fs-writeback: Add helper function to start writeback if idle
authorEric Sandeen <sandeen@redhat.com>
Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:57:07 +0000 (07:57 -0500)
committerTheodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:57:07 +0000 (07:57 -0500)
commit17bd55d037a02b04d9119511cfd1a4b985d20f63
treeddbc227fffb84d1b95f5f8c48b627f88f3fd56ed
parentd3533d72e7478a61a3e1936956fc825289a2acf4
fs-writeback: Add helper function to start writeback if idle

ext4, at least, would like to start pushing on writeback if it starts
to get close to ENOSPC when reserving worst-case blocks for delalloc
writes.  Writing out delalloc data will convert those worst-case
predictions into usually smaller actual usage, freeing up space
before we hit ENOSPC based on this speculation.

Thanks to Jens for the suggestion for the helper function,
& the naming help.

I've made the helper return status on whether writeback was
started even though I don't plan to use it in the ext4 patch;
it seems like it would be potentially useful to test this
in some cases.

Signed-off-by: Eric Sandeen <sandeen@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
fs/fs-writeback.c
include/linux/writeback.h