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diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/fuse-io.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/fuse-io.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..255a368fe534 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/fuse-io.rst @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 + +============== +Fuse I/O Modes +============== + +Fuse supports the following I/O modes: + +- direct-io +- cached + + write-through + + writeback-cache + +The direct-io mode can be selected with the FOPEN_DIRECT_IO flag in the +FUSE_OPEN reply. + +In direct-io mode the page cache is completely bypassed for reads and writes. +No read-ahead takes place. Shared mmap is disabled. + +In cached mode reads may be satisfied from the page cache, and data may be +read-ahead by the kernel to fill the cache. The cache is always kept consistent +after any writes to the file. All mmap modes are supported. + +The cached mode has two sub modes controlling how writes are handled. The +write-through mode is the default and is supported on all kernels. The +writeback-cache mode may be selected by the FUSE_WRITEBACK_CACHE flag in the +FUSE_INIT reply. + +In write-through mode each write is immediately sent to userspace as one or more +WRITE requests, as well as updating any cached pages (and caching previously +uncached, but fully written pages). No READ requests are ever sent for writes, +so when an uncached page is partially written, the page is discarded. + +In writeback-cache mode (enabled by the FUSE_WRITEBACK_CACHE flag) writes go to +the cache only, which means that the write(2) syscall can often complete very +fast. Dirty pages are written back implicitly (background writeback or page +reclaim on memory pressure) or explicitly (invoked by close(2), fsync(2) and +when the last ref to the file is being released on munmap(2)). This mode +assumes that all changes to the filesystem go through the FUSE kernel module +(size and atime/ctime/mtime attributes are kept up-to-date by the kernel), so +it's generally not suitable for network filesystems. If a partial page is +written, then the page needs to be first read from userspace. This means, that +even for files opened for O_WRONLY it is possible that READ requests will be +generated by the kernel. |