Re: [PATCH v2 5/8] docs: sysfs-block: document stable_writes

From: Bart Van Assche
Date: Wed Dec 08 2021 - 17:59:09 EST


On 12/8/21 2:34 PM, Eric Biggers wrote:
Yes, I meant "written out to disk" in the general sense of writeback, not in the
sense of when the data reaches its final destination. I'm not sure what the
best way to explain it is. I think it's more than just "the process of
transferring data from host memory to the device", as that is just part of a
write request, whereas stable_writes applies to whole requests. How about:

[RW] This file will contain '1' if memory must not be modified
while it is being used in a write request to this device. When
this is the case and the kernel is performing writeback of a
page, the kernel will wait for writeback to complete before
allowing the page to be modified again, rather than allowing
immediate modification as is normally the case. This
restriction arises when the device accesses the memory multiple
times where the same data must be seen every time -- for
example, once to calculate a checksum and once to actually write
the data. If no such restriction exists, this file will contain
'0'. This file is writable for testing purposes.

The above sounds good to me.

Thanks,

Bart.