@@ -9,14 +9,26 @@ ext4 code is not prepared to handle the case where the block size
exceeds the page size. However, for a filesystem of mostly huge files,
it is desirable to be able to allocate disk blocks in units of multiple
blocks to reduce both fragmentation and metadata overhead. The
-`bigalloc <Bigalloc>`__ feature provides exactly this ability. The
-administrator can set a block cluster size at mkfs time (which is stored
-in the s\_log\_cluster\_size field in the superblock); from then on, the
-block bitmaps track clusters, not individual blocks. This means that
-block groups can be several gigabytes in size (instead of just 128MiB);
-however, the minimum allocation unit becomes a cluster, not a block,
-even for directories. TaoBao had a patchset to extend the “use units of
-clusters instead of blocks” to the extent tree, though it is not clear
-where those patches went-- they eventually morphed into “extent tree v2”
-but that code has not landed as of May 2015.
+bigalloc feature provides exactly this ability.
+
+The bigalloc feature (EXT4_FEATURE_RO_COMPAT_BIGALLOC) changes ext4 to
+use clustered allocation, so that each bit in the ext4 block allocation
+bitmap addresses a power of two number of blocks. For example, if the
+file system is mainly going to be storing large files in the 4-32
+megabyte range, it might make sense to set a cluster size of 1 megabyte.
+This means that each bit in the block allocation bitmap now addresses
+256 4k blocks. This shrinks the total size of the block allocation
+bitmaps for a 2T file system from 64 megabytes to 256 kilobytes. It also
+means that a block group addresses 32 gigabytes instead of 128 megabytes,
+also shrinking the amount of file system overhead for metadata.
+
+The administrator can set a block cluster size at mkfs time (which is
+stored in the s\_log\_cluster\_size field in the superblock); from then
+on, the block bitmaps track clusters, not individual blocks. This means
+that block groups can be several gigabytes in size (instead of just
+128MiB); however, the minimum allocation unit becomes a cluster, not a
+block, even for directories. TaoBao had a patchset to extend the “use
+units of clusters instead of blocks” to the extent tree, though it is
+not clear where those patches went-- they eventually morphed into
+“extent tree v2” but that code has not landed as of May 2015.
There was a broken link for bigalloc. The page https://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Bigalloc was not migrated into the current documentation sources. This patch adds the contents of that missing page into the section for Bigalloc itself. Signed-off-by: Ayush Ranjan <ayushr2@illinois.edu> --- Please note that I have not included changes from the "Kernel Support" and "E2fsprogs Support" sections of the original page because the comments there seemed outdated. Documentation/filesystems/ext4/bigalloc.rst | 32 ++++++++++++++------- 1 file changed, 22 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-)