Takashi Sato
authored
Currently, ext3 in mainline Linux doesn't have the freeze feature which suspends write requests. So, we cannot take a backup which keeps the filesystem's consistency with the storage device's features (snapshot and replication) while it is mounted. In many case, a commercial filesystem (e.g. VxFS) has the freeze feature and it would be used to get the consistent backup. If Linux's standard filesystem ext3 has the freeze feature, we can do it without a commercial filesystem. So I have implemented the ioctls of the freeze feature. I think we can take the consistent backup with the following steps. 1. Freeze the filesystem with the freeze ioctl. 2. Separate the replication volume or create the snapshot with the storage device's feature. 3. Unfreeze the filesystem with the unfreeze ioctl. 4. Take the backup from the separated replication volume or the snapshot. This patch: VFS: Changed the type of write_super_lockfs and unlockfs...