1) Fastpath deletions. When a file is being deleted, check to see if it
was so recently created that its inode has not yet been written to
disk. If so, the delete can proceed to immediately free the inode.
2) Background writes: No file or block allocations can be done while the
bitmap is being written to disk. To avoid these stalls, the bitmap is
copied to another buffer which is written thus leaving the original
available for futher allocations.
3) Link count tracking. Constantly track the difference in i_effnlink and
i_nlink so that inodes that have had no change other than i_effnlink
need not be written.
4) Identify buffers with rollback dependencies so that the buffer flushing
daemon can choose to skip over them.
a sync on the block device for the filesystem. That allows it to push the
bitmap blocks before the inode blocks which greatly reduces the number of
inode rollbacks that need to be done.