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ext4: clarify impact of 'commit' mount option
The description of 'commit' mount option dates back to ext3 times. Update the description to match current meaning for ext4. Reported-by: Paul Richards <[email protected]> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <[email protected]> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/[email protected] Signed-off-by: Theodore Ts'o <[email protected]>
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Documentation/admin-guide/ext4.rst

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@@ -181,14 +181,17 @@ When mounting an ext4 filesystem, the following option are accepted:
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system after its metadata has been committed to the journal.
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commit=nrsec (*)
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Ext4 can be told to sync all its data and metadata every 'nrsec'
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seconds. The default value is 5 seconds. This means that if you lose
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your power, you will lose as much as the latest 5 seconds of work (your
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filesystem will not be damaged though, thanks to the journaling). This
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default value (or any low value) will hurt performance, but it's good
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for data-safety. Setting it to 0 will have the same effect as leaving
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it at the default (5 seconds). Setting it to very large values will
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improve performance.
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This setting limits the maximum age of the running transaction to
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'nrsec' seconds. The default value is 5 seconds. This means that if
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you lose your power, you will lose as much as the latest 5 seconds of
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metadata changes (your filesystem will not be damaged though, thanks
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to the journaling). This default value (or any low value) will hurt
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performance, but it's good for data-safety. Setting it to 0 will have
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the same effect as leaving it at the default (5 seconds). Setting it
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to very large values will improve performance. Note that due to
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delayed allocation even older data can be lost on power failure since
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writeback of those data begins only after time set in
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/proc/sys/vm/dirty_expire_centisecs.
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barrier=<0|1(*)>, barrier(*), nobarrier
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This enables/disables the use of write barriers in the jbd code.

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