freebsd-skq

History

Tor Egge b5ee7ec63a Initialize *countp to 0 in stub for softdep_flushworklist(). This allows ffs_fsync() to break out of a loop that might otherwise be infinite on kernels compiled without the SOFTUPDATES option. The observed symptom was a system hang at the first unmount attempt.		2000-08-09 00:41:54 +00:00
..
ffs_alloc.c	Minor change: fix warning - move a 'struct vnode *vp' declaration inside a	2000-07-28 22:27:00 +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	This patch corrects the first round of panics and hangs reported	2000-07-24 05:28:33 +00:00
ffs_inode.c	Clean up the snapshot code so that it no longer depends on the use of	2000-07-26 23:07:01 +00:00
ffs_snapshot.c	Clean up the snapshot code so that it no longer depends on the use of	2000-07-26 23:07:01 +00:00
ffs_softdep_stub.c	Initialize *countp to 0 in stub for softdep_flushworklist().	2000-08-09 00:41:54 +00:00
ffs_softdep.c	This patch corrects the first round of panics and hangs reported	2000-07-24 05:28:33 +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	Fix the lockmgr panic everyone is seeing at shutdown time.	2000-08-01 14:15:07 +00:00
ffs_vnops.c	Add snapshots to the fast filesystem. Most of the changes support	2000-07-11 22:07:57 +00:00
fs.h	Get userland visible flags added for snapshots to give a few days	2000-07-04 04:58:34 +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

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