freebsd-skq

History

Pawel Jakub Dawidek 5a19f8b0c4 Introduce new /boot/loader.conf variable: root_mount_delay. It can be used to delay mounting root partition to give a chance to GEOM providers to show up. Now, when there is no needed provider, vfs_rootmount() function will look for it every second and if it can't be find in defined time, it'll ask for root device name (before this change it was done immediately). This will allow to boot from gmirror device in degraded mode.		2004-09-23 10:13:18 +00:00
..
ffs_alloc.c	Remove the buffercache/vnode side of BIO_DELETE processing in	2004-09-13 06:50:42 +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	Put a version element in the VFS filesystem configuration structure	2004-07-30 22:08:52 +00:00
ffs_inode.c	Avoid using casts as lvalues. Introduce DIP_SET macro which sets proper	2004-07-28 06:41:27 +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	Do not traverse list of snapshots if there isn't one.	2004-09-16 17:28:56 +00:00
ffs_softdep_stub.c	Use __FBSDID().	2003-06-11 06:34:30 +00:00
ffs_softdep.c	use bufdone() not biodone().	2004-08-08 13:23:05 +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	Introduce new /boot/loader.conf variable: root_mount_delay.	2004-09-23 10:13:18 +00:00
ffs_vnops.c	The getpages VOP was a good stab at getting scatter/gather I/O without	2004-09-19 08:14:55 +00:00
fs.h	Generalize the UFS bad magic value used to determine when a filesystem	2004-08-19 11:09:13 +00:00
README.snapshot	Remove the comment about dump(8) not working properly with snapshots.	2002-12-12 00:31:45 +00:00
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