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author | Peter Maydell | 2018-03-06 12:20:44 +0100 |
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committer | Peter Maydell | 2018-03-06 12:20:44 +0100 |
commit | 58e2e17dba49b43f4ac9de19468aeae1c787dcc2 (patch) | |
tree | 97b0ec57f56d86b366522544fb7fe577e97b6167 /docs | |
parent | Merge remote-tracking branch 'remotes/dgibson/tags/ppc-for-2.12-20180306' int... (diff) | |
parent | block: Fix NULL dereference on empty drive error (diff) | |
download | qemu-58e2e17dba49b43f4ac9de19468aeae1c787dcc2.tar.gz qemu-58e2e17dba49b43f4ac9de19468aeae1c787dcc2.tar.xz qemu-58e2e17dba49b43f4ac9de19468aeae1c787dcc2.zip |
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.txt | 16 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | docs/qcow2-cache.txt | 46 |
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 |