[dm-devel] dm-cache: dirty state of blocks in writethrough mode

[Kumar amit mehta]

On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 03:26:08PM +0200, Heinz Mauelshagen wrote:
> On 07/23/2013 08:44 AM, Vijarnia, Anil wrote:
> >Hello,
> >In Documentation/cache.txt, section 'Updating on-disk metadata' mentions that "If the system crashes all cache blocks will be assumed dirty when restarted".
> >I am assuming that the above line is relevant for writeback mode only, and in writethrough mode the cache will always be coherent after a crash.
> >Can someone confirm/reject this assumption?
> 
> That's correct
> 
> Reason being that the cache never holds any dirty pages in
> writethrough mode.

I'm new to storage and would like to know the linux implementation of
writeback policy of disk cache. In case these disk caches are stored in
volatile RAM and we hit system crash, so that cache is gone, but somehow
we have to flush those pending writes to the backend storage, once the
system comes up. How this is achieved in general, Is it through some
kind of metadata that is maintained in a separate area of the disk or it
relies on the file system's journalling capability?

!!amit