Commit Graph

2 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
sobomax
5be3733785 Improve performance in a few key areas:
o Split the compression across several worker threads. By default, "several"
   matches number of CPUs, capped at 24 for sanity when running on a very big
   hardwares. Provide option to set that number manually;

 o Fix bug inherited from the mkulzma (R.I.P) which degraded already slow LZMA
   compression even further by calling function to release compression state
   after processing each block.

   It is neither documented as required nor actually required by the LZMA
   library. This caused spree of system calls to release memory and then map
   it again for every block. LZMA compression is more than 2x faster after this
   change alone;

 o Record time it takes to do compression and report throughput achieved.

 o Add simple first-level 256 entry hash table for de-dup code, so it's not
   becoming a bottleneck at big files.
2016-04-23 07:23:43 +00:00
sobomax
8abe971b5e Improve mkuzip(8) and geom_uzip(4), merge in LZMA support from mkulzma(8)
and geom_uncompress(4):

1. mkuzip(8):

 - Proper support for eliminating all-zero blocks when compressing an
   image. This feature is already supported by the geom_uzip(4) module
   and CLOOP format in general, so it's just a matter of making mkuzip(8)
   match. It should be noted, however that this feature while it sounds
   great, results in very slight improvement in the overall compression
   ratio, since compressing default 16k all-zero block produces only 39
   bytes compressed output block, which is 99.8% compression ratio. With
   typical average compression ratio of amd64 binaries and data being
   around 60-70% the difference between 99.8% and 100.0% is not that
   great further diluted by the ratio of number of zero blocks in the
   uncompressed image to the overall number of blocks being less than
   0.5 (typically). However, this may be important from performance
   standpoint, so that kernel are not spinning its wheels decompressing
   those empty blocks every time this zero region is read. It could also
   be important when you create huge image mostly filled with zero
   blocks for testing purposes.

 - New feature allowing to de-duplicate output image. It turns out that
   if you twist CLOOP format a bit you can do that as well. And unlike
   zero-blocks elimination, this gives a noticeable improvement in the
   overall compression ratio, reducing output image by something like
   3-4% on my test UFS2 3GB image consisting of full FreeBSD base system
   plus some of the packages (openjdk, apache etc), about 2.3GB worth of
   file data (800+MB compressed). The only caveat is that images created
   with this feature "on" would not work on older versions of FeeBSDxi
   kernel, hence it's turned off by default.

 - provide options to control both features and document them in manual
   page.

 - merge in all relevant LZMA compression support from the mkulzma(8),
   add new option to select between both.

 - switch license from ad-hoc beerware into standard 2-clause BSD.

2. geom_uzip(4):

 - implement support for de-duplicated images;

 - optimize some code paths to handle "all-zero" blocks without reading
   any compressed data;

 - beef up manual page to explain that geom_uzip(4) is not limited only
   to md(4) images. The compressed data can be written to the block
   device and accessed directly via magic of GEOM(4) and devfs(4),
   including to mount root fs from a compressed drive.

 - convert debug log code from being compiled in conditionally into
   being present all the time and provide two sysctls to turn it on or
   off. Due to intended use of the module, it can be used in
   environments where there may not be a luxury to put new kernel with
   debug code enabled. Having those options handy allows debug issues
   without as much problem by just having access to serial console or
   network shell access to a box/appliance. The resulting additional
   CPU cycles are just few int comparisons and branches, and those are
   minuscule when compared to data decompression which is the main
   feature of the module.

 - hopefully improve robustness and resiliency of the geom_uzip(4) by
   performing some of the data validation / range checking on the TOC
   entries and rejecting to attach to an image if those checks fail.

 - merge in all relevant LZMA decompression support from the
   geom_uncompress(4), enable automatically when appropriate format is
   indicated in the header.

 - move compilation work into its own worker thread so that it does not
   clog g_up. This allows multiple instances work in parallel utilizing
   smp cores.

 - document new knobs in the manual page.

Reviewed by:		adrian
MFC after:		1 month
Differential Revision:	https://reviews.freebsd.org/D5333
2016-02-23 23:59:08 +00:00