fs: introduce new truncate sequence

Introduce a new truncate calling sequence into fs/mm subsystems. Rather than
setattr > vmtruncate > truncate, have filesystems call their truncate sequence
from ->setattr if filesystem specific operations are required. vmtruncate is
deprecated, and truncate_pagecache and inode_newsize_ok helpers introduced
previously should be used.

simple_setattr is introduced for simple in-ram filesystems to implement
the new truncate sequence. Eventually all filesystems should be converted
to implement a setattr, and the default code in notify_change should go
away.

simple_setsize is also introduced to perform just the ATTR_SIZE portion
of simple_setattr (ie. changing i_size and trimming pagecache).

To implement the new truncate sequence:
- filesystem specific manipulations (eg freeing blocks) must be done in
  the setattr method rather than ->truncate.
- vmtruncate can not be used by core code to trim blocks past i_size in
  the event of write failure after allocation, so this must be performed
  in the fs code.
- convert usage of helpers block_write_begin, nobh_write_begin,
  cont_write_begin, and *blockdev_direct_IO* to use _newtrunc postfixed
  variants. These avoid calling vmtruncate to trim blocks (see previous).
- inode_setattr should not be used. generic_setattr is a new function
  to be used to copy simple attributes into the generic inode.
- make use of the better opportunity to handle errors with the new sequence.

Big problem with the previous calling sequence: the filesystem is not called
until i_size has already changed.  This means it is not allowed to fail the
call, and also it does not know what the previous i_size was. Also, generic
code calling vmtruncate to truncate allocated blocks in case of error had
no good way to return a meaningful error (or, for example, atomically handle
block deallocation).

Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt
index d4f5731dcbbb..94677e7dcb13 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt
@@ -401,11 +401,16 @@ otherwise noted.
         started might not be in the page cache at the end of the
         walk).
 
-  truncate: called by the VFS to change the size of a file.  The
+  truncate: Deprecated. This will not be called if ->setsize is defined.
+        Called by the VFS to change the size of a file.  The
         i_size field of the inode is set to the desired size by the
         VFS before this method is called.  This method is called by
         the truncate(2) system call and related functionality.
 
+        Note: ->truncate and vmtruncate are deprecated. Do not add new
+        instances/calls of these. Filesystems should be converted to do their
+        truncate sequence via ->setattr().
+
   permission: called by the VFS to check for access rights on a POSIX-like
         filesystem.