freebsd-nq

History

Bruce Evans 1723bc36ef Removed more vestiges of vfs_ioopt: - rev.1.42 of ffs_readwrite.c added a special case in ffs_read() for reads that are initially at EOF, and rev.1.62 of ufs_readwrite.c fixed timestamp bugs in it. Removal of most of vfs_ioopt made it just and optimization, and removal of the vm object reference calls made it less than an optimization. It was cloned in rev.1.94 of ufs_readwrite.c as part of cloning ffs_extwrite() although it was always less than an optimization in ffs_extwrite(). - some comments, compound statements and vertical whitespace were vestiges of dead code.		2004-02-11 15:27:26 +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
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	Avoid calling vprint on a vnode while holding its interlock mutex.	2004-01-04 04:08:34 +00:00
ffs_softdep_stub.c
ffs_softdep.c	Move the P_COWINPROGRESS flag from being a per-process p_flag to being a	2003-10-23 21:14:08 +00:00
ffs_subr.c
ffs_tables.c
ffs_vfsops.c	Set fs_ronly to the correct value in ffs_reload() when reloading the file	2003-12-07 05:16:52 +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
README.softupdates
softdep.h

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