Commit 0c891389 authored by Qu Wenruo's avatar Qu Wenruo Committed by David Sterba
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btrfs: relocation: Add introduction of how relocation works



Relocation is one of the most complex part of btrfs, while it's also the
foundation stone for online resizing, profile converting.

For such a complex facility, we should at least have some introduction
to it.

This patch will add an basic introduction at pretty a high level,
explaining:

- What relocation does
- How relocation is done
  Only mentioning how data reloc tree and reloc tree are involved in the
  operation.
  No details like the backref cache, or the data reloc tree contents.
- Which function to refer.

More detailed comments will be added for reloc tree creation, data reloc
tree creation and backref cache.

Signed-off-by: default avatarQu Wenruo <wqu@suse.com>
Reviewed-by: default avatarDavid Sterba <dsterba@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: default avatarDavid Sterba <dsterba@suse.com>
parent 42836cf4
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Original line number Diff line number Diff line
@@ -23,6 +23,53 @@
#include "delalloc-space.h"
#include "block-group.h"

/*
 * Relocation overview
 *
 * [What does relocation do]
 *
 * The objective of relocation is to relocate all extents of the target block
 * group to other block groups.
 * This is utilized by resize (shrink only), profile converting, compacting
 * space, or balance routine to spread chunks over devices.
 *
 * 		Before		|		After
 * ------------------------------------------------------------------
 *  BG A: 10 data extents	| BG A: deleted
 *  BG B:  2 data extents	| BG B: 10 data extents (2 old + 8 relocated)
 *  BG C:  1 extents		| BG C:  3 data extents (1 old + 2 relocated)
 *
 * [How does relocation work]
 *
 * 1.   Mark the target block group read-only
 *      New extents won't be allocated from the target block group.
 *
 * 2.1  Record each extent in the target block group
 *      To build a proper map of extents to be relocated.
 *
 * 2.2  Build data reloc tree and reloc trees
 *      Data reloc tree will contain an inode, recording all newly relocated
 *      data extents.
 *      There will be only one data reloc tree for one data block group.
 *
 *      Reloc tree will be a special snapshot of its source tree, containing
 *      relocated tree blocks.
 *      Each tree referring to a tree block in target block group will get its
 *      reloc tree built.
 *
 * 2.3  Swap source tree with its corresponding reloc tree
 *      Each involved tree only refers to new extents after swap.
 *
 * 3.   Cleanup reloc trees and data reloc tree.
 *      As old extents in the target block group are still referenced by reloc
 *      trees, we need to clean them up before really freeing the target block
 *      group.
 *
 * The main complexity is in steps 2.2 and 2.3.
 *
 * The entry point of relocation is relocate_block_group() function.
 */

/*
 * backref_node, mapping_node and tree_block start with this
 */