freebsd-nq/sys/ufs/ffs
Kirk McKusick 2cf5d587a9 This patch corrects two problems with the rate limiting code
that was introduced in revision 1.80. The problem manifested
itself with a `locking against myself' panic and could also
result in soft updates inconsistences associated with inodedeps.
The two problems are:

1) One of the background operations could manipulate the bitmap
while holding it locked with intent to create. This held lock
results in a `locking against myself' panic, when the background
processing that we have been coopted to do tries to lock the bitmap
which we are already holding locked. To understand how to fix this
problem, first, observe that we can do the background cleanups in
inodedep_lookup only when allocating inodedeps (DEPALLOC is set in
the call to inodedep_lookup). Second observe that calls to
inodedep_lookup with DEPALLOC set can only happen from the following
calls into the softdep code:

        softdep_setup_inomapdep
        softdep_setup_allocdirect
        softdep_setup_remove
        softdep_setup_freeblocks
        softdep_setup_directory_change
        softdep_setup_directory_add
        softdep_change_linkcnt

Only the first two of these can come from ffs_alloc.c while holding
a bitmap locked. Thus, inodedep_lookup must not go off to do
request_cleanups when being called from these functions. This change
adds a flag, NODELAY, that can be passed to inodedep_lookup to let
it know that it should not do background processing in those cases.

2) The return value from request_cleanup when helping out with the
cleanup was 0 instead of 1. This meant that despite the fact that
we may have slept while doing the cleanups, the code did not recheck
for the appearance of an inodedep (e.g., goto top in inodedep_lookup).
This lead to the softdep inconsistency in which we ended up with
two inodedep's for the same inode.

Reviewed by:	Peter Wemm <peter@yahoo-inc.com>,
		Matt Dillon <dillon@earth.backplane.com>
2001-02-20 11:14:38 +00:00
..
ffs_alloc.c Preceed/preceeding are not english words. Use precede and preceding. 2001-02-18 10:43:53 +00:00
ffs_balloc.c Add snapshots to the fast filesystem. Most of the changes support 2000-07-11 22:07:57 +00:00
ffs_extern.h Several small but important fixes for snapshots: 2000-12-19 04:41:09 +00:00
ffs_inode.c Get rid of spurious check in ffs_truncate for i_size == length 2000-12-19 04:20:13 +00:00
ffs_snapshot.c Implement a unified run queue and adjust priority levels accordingly. 2001-02-12 00:20:08 +00:00
ffs_softdep_stub.c add a stub for softdep_slowdown so that it's possible to build the 2000-12-17 23:59:56 +00:00
ffs_softdep.c This patch corrects two problems with the rate limiting code 2001-02-20 11:14:38 +00:00
ffs_subr.c Separate the struct bio related stuff out of <sys/buf.h> into 2000-05-05 09:59:14 +00:00
ffs_tables.c $Id$ -> $FreeBSD$ 1999-08-28 01:08:13 +00:00
ffs_vfsops.c Change and clean the mutex lock interface. 2001-02-09 06:11:45 +00:00
ffs_vnops.c Another round of the <sys/queue.h> FOREACH transmogriffer. 2001-02-04 16:08:18 +00:00
fs.h The ffs superblock includes a 128-byte region for use by temporary 2001-01-15 18:30:40 +00:00
README.snapshot Add snapshots to the fast filesystem. Most of the changes support 2000-07-11 22:07:57 +00:00
README.softupdates Update to reflect current status. 2000-07-08 02:31:21 +00:00
softdep.h Add snapshots to the fast filesystem. Most of the changes support 2000-07-11 22:07:57 +00:00

$FreeBSD$

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