From patchwork Fri Nov 30 13:02:25 2012 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Patchwork-Submitter: Kevin Wolf X-Patchwork-Id: 202941 Return-Path: X-Original-To: incoming@patchwork.ozlabs.org Delivered-To: patchwork-incoming@bilbo.ozlabs.org Received: from lists.gnu.org (lists.gnu.org [208.118.235.17]) (using TLSv1 with cipher AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by ozlabs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id C70CB2C0095 for ; Sat, 1 Dec 2012 00:03:04 +1100 (EST) Received: from localhost ([::1]:36235 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TeQFC-0002o6-FN for incoming@patchwork.ozlabs.org; Fri, 30 Nov 2012 08:03:02 -0500 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:41584) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TeQEs-0002nM-8D for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Fri, 30 Nov 2012 08:02:47 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TeQEl-0003cx-Ey for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Fri, 30 Nov 2012 08:02:42 -0500 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([209.132.183.28]:26306) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TeQEl-0003c1-6p for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Fri, 30 Nov 2012 08:02:35 -0500 Received: from int-mx10.intmail.prod.int.phx2.redhat.com (int-mx10.intmail.prod.int.phx2.redhat.com [10.5.11.23]) by mx1.redhat.com (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id qAUD2XLR018288 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=OK); Fri, 30 Nov 2012 08:02:33 -0500 Received: from dhcp-5-188.str.redhat.com (vpn1-4-186.ams2.redhat.com [10.36.4.186]) by int-mx10.intmail.prod.int.phx2.redhat.com (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id qAUD2U9V032316; Fri, 30 Nov 2012 08:02:32 -0500 From: Kevin Wolf To: anthony@codemonkey.ws Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2012 14:02:25 +0100 Message-Id: <1354280549-5954-2-git-send-email-kwolf@redhat.com> In-Reply-To: <1354280549-5954-1-git-send-email-kwolf@redhat.com> References: <1354280549-5954-1-git-send-email-kwolf@redhat.com> X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.68 on 10.5.11.23 X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 3.x X-Received-From: 209.132.183.28 Cc: kwolf@redhat.com, qemu-devel@nongnu.org Subject: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 1/5] Documentation: Update block cache mode information X-BeenThere: qemu-devel@nongnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: qemu-devel-bounces+incoming=patchwork.ozlabs.org@nongnu.org Sender: qemu-devel-bounces+incoming=patchwork.ozlabs.org@nongnu.org Somehow we forgot to update this when cache=writeback became the default. While changing the information on the default, also make the description of all caches modes a bit more accurate. Signed-off-by: Kevin Wolf Acked-by: Stefan Hajnoczi --- qemu-options.hx | 38 +++++++++++++++++++------------------- 1 files changed, 19 insertions(+), 19 deletions(-) diff --git a/qemu-options.hx b/qemu-options.hx index fbcf079..de43b1b 100644 --- a/qemu-options.hx +++ b/qemu-options.hx @@ -206,33 +206,33 @@ Open drive @option{file} as read-only. Guest write attempts will fail. file sectors into the image file. @end table -By default, writethrough caching is used for all block device. This means that -the host page cache will be used to read and write data but write notification -will be sent to the guest only when the data has been reported as written by -the storage subsystem. - -Writeback caching will report data writes as completed as soon as the data is -present in the host page cache. This is safe as long as you trust your host. -If your host crashes or loses power, then the guest may experience data -corruption. +By default, the @option{cache=writeback} mode is used. It will report data +writes as completed as soon as the data is present in the host page cache. +This is safe as long as your guest OS makes sure to correctly flush disk caches +where needed. If your guest OS does not handle volatile disk write caches +correctly and your host crashes or loses power, then the guest may experience +data corruption. + +For such guests, you should consider using @option{cache=writethrough}. This +means that the host page cache will be used to read and write data, but write +notification will be sent to the guest only after QEMU has made sure to flush +each write to the disk. Be aware that this has a major impact on performance. The host page cache can be avoided entirely with @option{cache=none}. This will -attempt to do disk IO directly to the guests memory. QEMU may still perform -an internal copy of the data. +attempt to do disk IO directly to the guest's memory. QEMU may still perform +an internal copy of the data. Note that this is considered a writeback mode and +the guest OS must handle the disk write cache correctly in order to avoid data +corruption on host crashes. The host page cache can be avoided while only sending write notifications to -the guest when the data has been reported as written by the storage subsystem -using @option{cache=directsync}. - -Some block drivers perform badly with @option{cache=writethrough}, most notably, -qcow2. If performance is more important than correctness, -@option{cache=writeback} should be used with qcow2. +the guest when the data has been flushed to the disk using +@option{cache=directsync}. In case you don't care about data integrity over host failures, use -cache=unsafe. This option tells QEMU that it never needs to write any data -to the disk but can instead keeps things in cache. If anything goes wrong, +@option{cache=unsafe}. This option tells QEMU that it never needs to write any +data to the disk but can instead keep things in cache. If anything goes wrong, like your host losing power, the disk storage getting disconnected accidentally, -etc. you're image will most probably be rendered unusable. When using +etc. your image will most probably be rendered unusable. When using the @option{-snapshot} option, unsafe caching is always used. Copy-on-read avoids accessing the same backing file sectors repeatedly and is