TRUNCATE_INODE_PAGES

Section: Memory Management in Linux (9)
Updated: February 2011
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NAME

truncate_inode_pages_range - truncate range of pages specified by start & end byte offsets  

SYNOPSIS

void truncate_inode_pages_range(struct address_space * mapping, loff_t lstart, loff_t lend);
 

ARGUMENTS

mapping

mapping to truncate

lstart

offset from which to truncate

lend

offset to which to truncate
 

DESCRIPTION

Truncate the page cache, removing the pages that are between specified offsets (and zeroing out partial page (if lstart is not page aligned)).

Truncate takes two passes - the first pass is nonblocking. It will not block on page locks and it will not block on writeback. The second pass will wait. This is to prevent as much IO as possible in the affected region. The first pass will remove most pages, so the search cost of the second pass is low.

When looking at page->index outside the page lock we need to be careful to copy it into a local to avoid races (it could change at any time).

We pass down the cache-hot hint to the page freeing code. Even if the mapping is large, it is probably the case that the final pages are the most recently touched, and freeing happens in ascending file offset order.  

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