freebsd-nq

History

Poul-Henning Kamp e3c5a7a4dd When we traverse the vnodes on a mountpoint we need to look out for our cached 'next vnode' being removed from this mountpoint. If we find that it was recycled, we restart our traversal from the start of the list. Code to do that is in all local disk filesystems (and a few other places) and looks roughly like this: MNT_ILOCK(mp); loop: for (vp = TAILQ_FIRST(&mp...); (vp = nvp) != NULL; nvp = TAILQ_NEXT(vp,...)) { if (vp->v_mount != mp) goto loop; MNT_IUNLOCK(mp); ... MNT_ILOCK(mp); } MNT_IUNLOCK(mp); The code which takes vnodes off a mountpoint looks like this: MNT_ILOCK(vp->v_mount); ... TAILQ_REMOVE(&vp->v_mount->mnt_nvnodelist, vp, v_nmntvnodes); ... MNT_IUNLOCK(vp->v_mount); ... vp->v_mount = something; (Take a moment and try to spot the locking error before you read on.) On a SMP system, one CPU could have removed nvp from our mountlist but not yet gotten to assign a new value to vp->v_mount while another CPU simultaneously get to the top of the traversal loop where it finds that (vp->v_mount != mp) is not true despite the fact that the vnode has indeed been removed from our mountpoint. Fix: Introduce the macro MNT_VNODE_FOREACH() to traverse the list of vnodes on a mountpoint while taking into account that vnodes may be removed from the list as we go. This saves approx 65 lines of duplicated code. Split the insmntque() which potentially moves a vnode from one mount point to another into delmntque() and insmntque() which does just what the names say. Fix delmntque() to set vp->v_mount to NULL while holding the mountpoint lock.		2004-07-04 08:52:35 +00:00
..
ffs_alloc.c	Do the dreaded s/dev_t/struct cdev */	2004-06-16 09:47:26 +00:00
ffs_balloc.c	Remove advertising clause from University of California Regent's	2004-04-07 03:47:21 +00:00
ffs_extern.h	Remove advertising clause from University of California Regent's	2004-04-07 03:47:21 +00:00
ffs_inode.c	Remove advertising clause from University of California Regent's	2004-04-07 03:47:21 +00:00
ffs_rawread.c	Move TDF_DEADLKTREAT into td_pflags (and rename it accordingly) to avoid	2004-06-03 01:47:37 +00:00
ffs_snapshot.c	When we traverse the vnodes on a mountpoint we need to look out for	2004-07-04 08:52:35 +00:00
ffs_softdep_stub.c	Use __FBSDID().	2003-06-11 06:34:30 +00:00
ffs_softdep.c	Fix a paste-o from the buf_prewrite() cleanup commit and check for the	2004-04-06 19:20:24 +00:00
ffs_subr.c	Remove advertising clause from University of California Regent's	2004-04-07 03:47:21 +00:00
ffs_tables.c	Remove advertising clause from University of California Regent's	2004-04-07 03:47:21 +00:00
ffs_vfsops.c	When we traverse the vnodes on a mountpoint we need to look out for	2004-07-04 08:52:35 +00:00
ffs_vnops.c	Upon further review it was decided this piece of the msync(2)	2004-05-21 12:05:48 +00:00
fs.h	- Fix typo	2004-05-31 16:55:12 +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