Btrfs Change Coming For Linux 7.2 Yields Very Healthy Performance Gain
A significant performance improvement for Btrfs is expected in the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel. This change addresses a regression that caused Direct I/O writes to be serialized, leading to reduced performance. The fix is anticipated to yield nearly a 60% increase in throughput for DIO operations.
- ▪The upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel will include a change that improves Direct I/O write performance for Btrfs.
- ▪This improvement is a regression fix for an issue that arose after a transition to a new mount API in 2023.
- ▪The expected performance gain is around 59%, increasing throughput from 826 MB/s to 1311 MB/s.
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Btrfs Change Coming For Linux 7.2 Yields Very Healthy Performance Gain Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Storage on 29 May 2026 at 07:17 AM EDT. Add A Comment A change coming on the way for the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel cycle is yielding a significant improvement to the direct I/O write performance. While a big gain, technically it's a regression fix after a change mistakenly dropped the behavior several years ago. The change on its way to Linux 7.2 for Btrfs is to not force Direct I/O (DIO) writes to be serialized. Mark Harmstone with Meta discovered that Btrfs was mistakenly serializing DIO writes since 2023 when converting the file-system over to the new mount API for the Linux kernel.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Phoronix.