Re: write(2) and page cache

[Hugh Dickins]

On Sun, 28 Jul 2013, dmi p wrote:
> Hi,
> When I write(2) on a file such that the size of the buffer being
> written is less than the page size, and the page is not in the page
> cache, does the write syscall block until the page is brought into the
> page cache from disk (to modify it and eventually write back),

Yes (except perhaps when overwriting that part of page at end of file:
I expect some filesystems might optimize out that read, and others not).

> or is the page reading part async with respect to write?

No, that would involve another layer of buffering, which I think
would be too hard to synchronize with page cache and mmap.

Hugh
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