Traditionally the GEOM's primary channel of information from kernel to
user-space was confxml, fetched by libgeom through kern.geom.confxml
sysctl. It is convenient and informative, representing full state of
GEOM in a single XML document. But problems start to arise on systems
with hundreds of disks, where the full confxml size reaches many
megabytes, taking significant time to first write it and then parse.
This patch introduces alternative solution, allowing to fetch much
smaller XML document, subset of the full confxml, limited to 64KB and
representing only one specified geom and optionally its parents. It
uses existing GEOM control interface, extended with new "getxml" verb.
In case of any error, such as the buffer overflow, it just transparently
falls back to traditional full confxml. This patch uses the new API in
user-space GEOM tools where it is possible.
Reviewed by: imp
MFC after: 2 month
Sponsored by: iXsystems, Inc.
Differential Revision: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D34529
7f16b501e2