What does O_DIRECT really mean?

Question

If I open a file with O_DIRECT flag, does it mean that whenever a write(blocking mode) to that file returns, the data is on disk?

Answer 1

(This answer pertains to Linux - other OSes may have different caveats/semantics)

Let's start with the sub-question:

If I open a file with O_DIRECT flag, does it mean that whenever a write(blocking mode) to that file returns, the data is on disk?

No (as @michael-foukarakis commented) - if you need a guarantee your data made it to non-volatile storage you must use/add something else.

What does O_DIRECT really mean?

It's a hint that you want your I/O to bypass the Linux kernel's caches. What will actually happen depends on things like:

• Disk configuration
• Whether you are opening a block device or a file in a filesystem
• If using a file within a filesystem
  • The exact filesystem used and the options in use on the filesystem and the file
  • Whether you've correctly aligned your I/O
  • Whether a filesystem has to do a new block allocation to satisfy your I/O
• If the underlying disk is local, what layers you have in your kernel storage stack before you reach the disk block device
• Linux kernel version
• ...

The list above is not exhaustive.

In the "best" case, setting O_DIRECT will avoid making extra copies of data while transferring it and the call will return after transfer is complete. You are more likely to be in this case when directly opening block devices of "real" local disks. As previously stated, even this property doesn't guarantee that data of a write() call will survive sudden power loss. IF the data is DMA'd out of RAM to non-volatile storage (e.g. battery backed RAID controller) or the RAM itself is persistent storage THEN you may have have a guarantee that the data is on stable storage (and can survive power loss) but you would need to qualify your hardware stack so you can't assume this in general.

In the "worst" case, O_DIRECT can mean nothing at all even though setting it wasn't rejected and subsequent calls "succeed". Sometimes things in the Linux storage stack (like certain filesystem setups) can choose to ignore it because of what they have to do or because you didn't satisfy the requirements (which is legal) and just silently do buffered I/O instead (i.e. write to a buffer/satisfy read from already buffered data). It is unclear whether extra effort will be made to ensure that the data of an acknowledged write was at least with the device (but in the O_DIRECT and barriers thread Christoph Hellwig posts that the O_DIRECT fallback will ensure data has at least been sent to the device). A further complication is that using O_DIRECT implies nothing about file metadata so even if write data is "with the disk" by call completion, key file metadata (like the size of the file because you were doing an append) may not be. Thus you may not actually be able to get at the data you thought had been transferred after a crash (it may appear truncated, or all zeros etc).

While brief testing can make it look like data using O_DIRECT alone always implies data will be on disk after a write returns, changing things (e.g. using an Ext4 filesystem instead of XFS) can weaken what is actually achieved in very drastic ways.

As you mention "guarantee that the data" (rather than metadata) perhaps you're looking for O_DSYNC/fdatasync()? If you want to guarantee metadata was written too, you will have to look at O_SYNC/fsync().

References

• Ext4 Wiki: Clarifying Direct IO's Semantics. Also contains notes about what O_DIRECT does on a few non-Linux OSes.
• The "[PATCH 1/1 linux-next] ext4: add compatibility flag check to the patch" LKML thread has a reply from Ext4 lead dev Ted Ts'o talking about how filesystems can fallback to buffered I/O for O_DIRECT rather than failing the open() call.
• In the "ubifs: Allow O_DIRECT" LKML thread Btrfs lead developer Chris Mason states Btrfs resorts to buffered I/O when O_DIRECT is requested on compressed files.
• ZFS on Linux commit message discussing the semantics of O_DIRECT in different scenarios. Also see the (at the time of writing mid-2020) proposed new O_DIRECT semantics for ZFS on Linux (the interactions are complex and defy a brief explanation).
• Linux open(2) man page (search for O_DIRECT in the Description section and the Notes section)
• Ensuring data reaches disk LWN article
• Infamous Linus Torvalds O_DIRECT LKML thread summary (for even more context you can see the full LKML thread)