freebsd-dev

History

Poul-Henning Kamp ceb58ca58f When I was a kid my work table was one cluttered mess an cleaning it up were a rather overwhelming task. I soon learned that if you don't know where you're going to store something, at least try to pile it next to something slightly related in the hope that a pattern emerges. Apply the same principle to the ffs/snapshot/softupdates code which have leaked into specfs: Add yet a buf-quasi-method and call it from the only two places I can see it can make a difference and implement the magic in ffs_softdep.c where it belongs. It's not pretty, but at least it's one less layer violated.		2004-03-11 18:50:33 +00:00
..
ffs_alloc.c	Tweak the calculation of minbfree in ffs_dirpref() so that only	2003-10-31 07:25:06 +00:00
ffs_balloc.c	Eliminate the i_devvp field from the incore UFS inodes, we can	2003-08-15 20:03:19 +00:00
ffs_extern.h	This patch fixes a bug on an active filesystem on which a snapshot	2003-02-22 00:29:51 +00:00
ffs_inode.c	DuH!	2003-10-18 14:10:28 +00:00
ffs_rawread.c	Send B_PHYS out to pasture, it no longer serves any function.	2003-11-15 09:28:09 +00:00
ffs_snapshot.c	Fix style bugs in previous commit.	2004-02-13 02:02:06 +00:00
ffs_softdep_stub.c	Use __FBSDID().	2003-06-11 06:34:30 +00:00
ffs_softdep.c	When I was a kid my work table was one cluttered mess an cleaning it up	2004-03-11 18:50:33 +00:00
ffs_subr.c	Use __FBSDID().	2003-06-11 06:34:30 +00:00
ffs_tables.c	Use __FBSDID().	2003-06-11 06:34:30 +00:00
ffs_vfsops.c	Fixed some style bugs:	2004-02-14 04:41:13 +00:00
ffs_vnops.c	Removed more vestiges of vfs_ioopt:	2004-02-11 15:27:26 +00:00
fs.h	Write the UFS2 superblock with a 'BAD' magic number at the beginning	2003-11-16 07:08:27 +00:00
README.snapshot	Remove the comment about dump(8) not working properly with snapshots.	2002-12-12 00:31:45 +00:00
README.softupdates
softdep.h	Add support to UFS2 to provide storage for extended attributes.	2002-07-19 07:29:39 +00:00

README.softupdates

$FreeBSD$

Using Soft Updates

To enable the soft updates feature in your kernel, add option
SOFTUPDATES to your kernel configuration.

Once you are running a kernel with soft update support, you need to enable
it for whichever filesystems you wish to run with the soft update policy.
This is done with the -n option to tunefs(8) on the UNMOUNTED filesystems,
e.g. from single-user mode you'd do something like:

	tunefs -n enable /usr

To permanently enable soft updates on the /usr filesystem (or at least
until a corresponding ``tunefs -n disable'' is done).


Soft Updates Copyright Restrictions

As of June 2000 the restrictive copyright has been removed and 
replaced with a `Berkeley-style' copyright. The files implementing
soft updates now reside in the sys/ufs/ffs directory and are
compiled into the generic kernel by default.


Soft Updates Status

The soft updates code has been running in production on many
systems for the past two years generally quite successfully.
The two current sets of shortcomings are:

1) On filesystems that are chronically full, the two minute lag
   from the time a file is deleted until its free space shows up
   will result in premature filesystem full failures. This
   failure mode is most evident in small filesystems such as
   the root. For this reason, use of soft updates is not
   recommended on the root filesystem.

2) If your system routines runs parallel processes each of which
   remove many files, the kernel memory rate limiting code may
   not be able to slow removal operations to a level sustainable
   by the disk subsystem. The result is that the kernel runs out
   of memory and hangs.

Both of these problems are being addressed, but have not yet
been resolved. There are no other known problems at this time.


How Soft Updates Work

For more general information on soft updates, please see:
	http://www.mckusick.com/softdep/
	http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/papers/CSE-TR-254-95/

--
Marshall Kirk McKusick <mckusick@mckusick.com>
July 2000