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
geom_uzip module. This is based on utility I wrote some 3 years ago for a
hack for md(4), which functionally was close to what geom_uzip does today.
Since I don't have a time to test that it compiles/works on other arches,
stick it to i386 only. Will do it later.
Unlike original cloop util, this one embedds FreeBSD-compatible shell code
into the generated image, not Linux one. Unfortunately severe space
restriction imposed by the CLOOP format doesn't allow to put conditional
code which will work both on Linux and FreeBSD. In fact it was quite a
challenge to fit necessary FreeBSD code into 127 bytes. ;-)
