[2/7] btrfs: avoid create and commit empty transaction when committing super

Commit Message

Filipe Manana May 22, 2024, 2:36 p.m. UTC

From: Filipe Manana <[e-mail]>

At btrfs_commit_super(), called in a few contextes such as when unmounting
a filesystem, we use btrfs_join_transaction() to catch any running
transaction and then commit it. This will however create a new and empty
transaction in case there's no running transaction or there's a running
transaction with a state >= TRANS_STATE_UNBLOCKED.

As we just want to be sure that any existing transaction is fully
committed, we can use btrfs_attach_transaction_barrier() instead of
btrfs_join_transaction(), therefore avoiding the creation and commit of
empty transactions, which only waste IO and causes rotation of the
precious backup roots.

Example where we create and commit a pointless empty transaction:

  $ mkfs.btrfs -f /dev/sdj
  $ btrfs inspect-internal dump-super /dev/sdj | grep -e '^generation'
  generation            6

  $ mount /dev/sdj /mnt/sdj
  $ touch /mnt/sdj/foo

  # Commit the currently open transaction. Just 'sync' or wait ~30
  # seconds for the transaction kthread to commit it.
  $ sync

  $ btrfs inspect-internal dump-super /dev/sdj | grep -e '^generation'
  generation            7

  $ umount /mnt/sdj

  $ btrfs inspect-internal dump-super /dev/sdj | grep -e '^generation'
  generation            8

The transaction with id 8 was pointless, an empty transaction that did
not achieve anything.

Signed-off-by: Filipe Manana <[e-mail]>
---
 fs/btrfs/disk-io.c | 10 +++++++---
 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

Patch

diff --git a/fs/btrfs/disk-io.c b/fs/btrfs/disk-io.c
index eec5bb392b8e..2f56f967beb8 100644
--- a/fs/btrfs/disk-io.c
+++ b/fs/btrfs/disk-io.c
@@ -4156,9 +4156,13 @@  int btrfs_commit_super(struct btrfs_fs_info *fs_info)
 	down_write(&fs_info->cleanup_work_sem);
 	up_write(&fs_info->cleanup_work_sem);
 
-	trans = btrfs_join_transaction(root);
-	if (IS_ERR(trans))
-		return PTR_ERR(trans);
+	trans = btrfs_attach_transaction_barrier(root);
+	if (IS_ERR(trans)) {
+		int ret = PTR_ERR(trans);
+
+		return (ret == -ENOENT) ? 0 : ret;
+	}
+
 	return btrfs_commit_transaction(trans);
 }