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authorPeter Maydell2018-03-06 12:20:44 +0100
committerPeter Maydell2018-03-06 12:20:44 +0100
commit58e2e17dba49b43f4ac9de19468aeae1c787dcc2 (patch)
tree97b0ec57f56d86b366522544fb7fe577e97b6167 /docs
parentMerge remote-tracking branch 'remotes/dgibson/tags/ppc-for-2.12-20180306' int... (diff)
parentblock: Fix NULL dereference on empty drive error (diff)
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Merge remote-tracking branch 'remotes/kevin/tags/for-upstream' into staging
Block layer patches # gpg: Signature made Mon 05 Mar 2018 17:45:51 GMT # gpg: using RSA key 7F09B272C88F2FD6 # gpg: Good signature from "Kevin Wolf <kwolf@redhat.com>" # Primary key fingerprint: DC3D EB15 9A9A F95D 3D74 56FE 7F09 B272 C88F 2FD6 * remotes/kevin/tags/for-upstream: (38 commits) block: Fix NULL dereference on empty drive error qcow2: Replace align_offset() with ROUND_UP() block/ssh: Add basic .bdrv_truncate() block/ssh: Make ssh_grow_file() blocking block/ssh: Pull ssh_grow_file() from ssh_create() qemu-img: Make resize error message more general qcow2: make qcow2_co_create2() a coroutine_fn block: rename .bdrv_create() to .bdrv_co_create_opts() Revert "IDE: Do not flush empty CDROM drives" block: test blk_aio_flush() with blk->root == NULL block: add BlockBackend->in_flight counter block: extract AIO_WAIT_WHILE() from BlockDriverState aio: rename aio_context_in_iothread() to in_aio_context_home_thread() docs: document how to use the l2-cache-entry-size parameter specs/qcow2: Fix documentation of the compressed cluster descriptor iotest 033: add misaligned write-zeroes test via truncate block: fix write with zero flag set and iovector provided block: Drop unused .bdrv_co_get_block_status() vvfat: Switch to .bdrv_co_block_status() vpc: Switch to .bdrv_co_block_status() ... Signed-off-by: Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org> # Conflicts: # include/block/block.h
Diffstat (limited to 'docs')
-rw-r--r--docs/interop/qcow2.txt16
-rw-r--r--docs/qcow2-cache.txt46
2 files changed, 56 insertions, 6 deletions
diff --git a/docs/interop/qcow2.txt b/docs/interop/qcow2.txt
index d7fdb1fee3..feb711fb6a 100644
--- a/docs/interop/qcow2.txt
+++ b/docs/interop/qcow2.txt
@@ -426,10 +426,20 @@ Standard Cluster Descriptor:
Compressed Clusters Descriptor (x = 62 - (cluster_bits - 8)):
- Bit 0 - x: Host cluster offset. This is usually _not_ aligned to a
- cluster boundary!
+ Bit 0 - x-1: Host cluster offset. This is usually _not_ aligned to a
+ cluster or sector boundary!
- x+1 - 61: Compressed size of the images in sectors of 512 bytes
+ x - 61: Number of additional 512-byte sectors used for the
+ compressed data, beyond the sector containing the offset
+ in the previous field. Some of these sectors may reside
+ in the next contiguous host cluster.
+
+ Note that the compressed data does not necessarily occupy
+ all of the bytes in the final sector; rather, decompression
+ stops when it has produced a cluster of data.
+
+ Another compressed cluster may map to the tail of the final
+ sector used by this compressed cluster.
If a cluster is unallocated, read requests shall read the data from the backing
file (except if bit 0 in the Standard Cluster Descriptor is set). If there is
diff --git a/docs/qcow2-cache.txt b/docs/qcow2-cache.txt
index b0571de4b8..170191a242 100644
--- a/docs/qcow2-cache.txt
+++ b/docs/qcow2-cache.txt
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
qcow2 L2/refcount cache configuration
=====================================
-Copyright (C) 2015 Igalia, S.L.
+Copyright (C) 2015, 2018 Igalia, S.L.
Author: Alberto Garcia <berto@igalia.com>
This work is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL, version 2 or
@@ -118,8 +118,8 @@ There are three options available, and all of them take bytes:
There are two things that need to be taken into account:
- - Both caches must have a size that is a multiple of the cluster
- size.
+ - Both caches must have a size that is a multiple of the cluster size
+ (or the cache entry size: see "Using smaller cache sizes" below).
- If you only set one of the options above, QEMU will automatically
adjust the others so that the L2 cache is 4 times bigger than the
@@ -143,6 +143,46 @@ much less often than the L2 cache, so it's perfectly reasonable to
keep it small.
+Using smaller cache entries
+---------------------------
+The qcow2 L2 cache stores complete tables by default. This means that
+if QEMU needs an entry from an L2 table then the whole table is read
+from disk and is kept in the cache. If the cache is full then a
+complete table needs to be evicted first.
+
+This can be inefficient with large cluster sizes since it results in
+more disk I/O and wastes more cache memory.
+
+Since QEMU 2.12 you can change the size of the L2 cache entry and make
+it smaller than the cluster size. This can be configured using the
+"l2-cache-entry-size" parameter:
+
+ -drive file=hd.qcow2,l2-cache-size=2097152,l2-cache-entry-size=4096
+
+Some things to take into account:
+
+ - The L2 cache entry size has the same restrictions as the cluster
+ size (power of two, at least 512 bytes).
+
+ - Smaller entry sizes generally improve the cache efficiency and make
+ disk I/O faster. This is particularly true with solid state drives
+ so it's a good idea to reduce the entry size in those cases. With
+ rotating hard drives the situation is a bit more complicated so you
+ should test it first and stay with the default size if unsure.
+
+ - Try different entry sizes to see which one gives faster performance
+ in your case. The block size of the host filesystem is generally a
+ good default (usually 4096 bytes in the case of ext4).
+
+ - Only the L2 cache can be configured this way. The refcount cache
+ always uses the cluster size as the entry size.
+
+ - If the L2 cache is big enough to hold all of the image's L2 tables
+ (as explained in the "Choosing the right cache sizes" section
+ earlier in this document) then none of this is necessary and you
+ can omit the "l2-cache-entry-size" parameter altogether.
+
+
Reducing the memory usage
-------------------------
It is possible to clean unused cache entries in order to reduce the