freebsd-nq

History

Poul-Henning Kamp fae974f156 Degeneralize the per cdev copyonwrite callback. The only possible value is ffs_copyonwrite() and the only place it can be called from is FFS which would never want to call another filesystems copyonwrite method, should one exist, so there is no reason why anything generic should know about this.		2004-10-26 06:25:56 +00:00
..
ffs_alloc.c	Explicitly break out NETA license from Berkeley license to clearly	2004-10-20 08:05:02 +00:00
ffs_balloc.c	Explicitly break out NETA license from Berkeley license to clearly	2004-10-20 08:05:02 +00:00
ffs_extern.h	Degeneralize the per cdev copyonwrite callback. The only possible value	2004-10-26 06:25:56 +00:00
ffs_inode.c	Loose the v_dirty* and v_clean* alias macros.	2004-10-25 09:14:03 +00:00
ffs_rawread.c	Loose the v_dirty* and v_clean* alias macros.	2004-10-25 09:14:03 +00:00
ffs_snapshot.c	Degeneralize the per cdev copyonwrite callback. The only possible value	2004-10-26 06:25:56 +00:00
ffs_softdep_stub.c	Use __FBSDID().	2003-06-11 06:34:30 +00:00
ffs_softdep.c	Degeneralize the per cdev copyonwrite callback. The only possible value	2004-10-26 06:25:56 +00:00
ffs_subr.c	Update for the KDB debugger framework:	2004-07-10 20:45:47 +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	Loose the v_dirty* and v_clean* alias macros.	2004-10-25 09:14:03 +00:00
ffs_vnops.c	Loose the v_dirty* and v_clean* alias macros.	2004-10-25 09:14:03 +00:00
fs.h	Fix fsbtodb() for UFS1. This fixes an overflow for file sizes >1 TB,	2004-10-09 20:16:06 +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