When creating an image with preallocation "off" or "falloc", the first
block of the image is typically not allocated. When using Gluster
storage backed by XFS filesystem, reading this block using direct I/O
succeeds regardless of request length, fooling alignment detection.
In this case we fallback to a safe value (4096) instead of the optimal
value (512), which may lead to unneeded data copying when aligning
requests. Allocating the first block avoids the fallback.
Since we allocate the first block even with preallocation=off, we no
longer create images with zero disk size:
$ ./qemu-img create -f raw test.raw 1g
Formatting 'test.raw', fmt=raw size=1073741824
$ ls -lhs test.raw
4.0K -rw-r--r--. 1 nsoffer nsoffer 1.0G Aug 16 23:48 test.raw
And converting the image requires additional cluster:
$ ./qemu-img measure -f raw -O qcow2 test.raw
required size: 458752
fully allocated size: 1074135040
When using format like vmdk with multiple files per image, we allocate
one block per file:
$ ./qemu-img create -f vmdk -o subformat=twoGbMaxExtentFlat test.vmdk 4g
Formatting 'test.vmdk', fmt=vmdk size=4294967296 compat6=off hwversion=undefined subformat=twoGbMaxExtentFlat
$ ls -lhs test*.vmdk
4.0K -rw-r--r--. 1 nsoffer nsoffer 2.0G Aug 27 03:23 test-f001.vmdk
4.0K -rw-r--r--. 1 nsoffer nsoffer 2.0G Aug 27 03:23 test-f002.vmdk
4.0K -rw-r--r--. 1 nsoffer nsoffer 353 Aug 27 03:23 test.vmdk
I did quick performance test for copying disks with qemu-img convert to
new raw target image to Gluster storage with sector size of 512 bytes:
for i in $(seq 10); do
rm -f dst.raw
sleep 10
time ./qemu-img convert -f raw -O raw -t none -T none src.raw dst.raw
done
Here is a table comparing the total time spent:
Type Before(s) After(s) Diff(%)
---------------------------------------
real 530.028 469.123 -11.4
user 17.204 10.768 -37.4
sys 17.881 7.011 -60.7
We can see very clear improvement in CPU usage.
Signed-off-by: Nir Soffer <nsoffer@redhat.com>
Message-id: 20190827010528.8818-2-nsoffer@redhat.com
Reviewed-by: Max Reitz <mreitz@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Max Reitz <mreitz@redhat.com>
QEMU README
===========
QEMU is a generic and open source machine & userspace emulator and
virtualizer.
QEMU is capable of emulating a complete machine in software without any
need for hardware virtualization support. By using dynamic translation,
it achieves very good performance. QEMU can also integrate with the Xen
and KVM hypervisors to provide emulated hardware while allowing the
hypervisor to manage the CPU. With hypervisor support, QEMU can achieve
near native performance for CPUs. When QEMU emulates CPUs directly it is
capable of running operating systems made for one machine (e.g. an ARMv7
board) on a different machine (e.g. an x86_64 PC board).
QEMU is also capable of providing userspace API virtualization for Linux
and BSD kernel interfaces. This allows binaries compiled against one
architecture ABI (e.g. the Linux PPC64 ABI) to be run on a host using a
different architecture ABI (e.g. the Linux x86_64 ABI). This does not
involve any hardware emulation, simply CPU and syscall emulation.
QEMU aims to fit into a variety of use cases. It can be invoked directly
by users wishing to have full control over its behaviour and settings.
It also aims to facilitate integration into higher level management
layers, by providing a stable command line interface and monitor API.
It is commonly invoked indirectly via the libvirt library when using
open source applications such as oVirt, OpenStack and virt-manager.
QEMU as a whole is released under the GNU General Public License,
version 2. For full licensing details, consult the LICENSE file.
Building
========
QEMU is multi-platform software intended to be buildable on all modern
Linux platforms, OS-X, Win32 (via the Mingw64 toolchain) and a variety
of other UNIX targets. The simple steps to build QEMU are:
mkdir build
cd build
../configure
make
Additional information can also be found online via the QEMU website:
https://qemu.org/Hosts/Linux
https://qemu.org/Hosts/Mac
https://qemu.org/Hosts/W32
Submitting patches
==================
The QEMU source code is maintained under the GIT version control system.
git clone https://git.qemu.org/git/qemu.git
When submitting patches, one common approach is to use 'git
format-patch' and/or 'git send-email' to format & send the mail to the
qemu-devel@nongnu.org mailing list. All patches submitted must contain
a 'Signed-off-by' line from the author. Patches should follow the
guidelines set out in the HACKING and CODING_STYLE files.
Additional information on submitting patches can be found online via
the QEMU website
https://qemu.org/Contribute/SubmitAPatch
https://qemu.org/Contribute/TrivialPatches
The QEMU website is also maintained under source control.
git clone https://git.qemu.org/git/qemu-web.git
https://www.qemu.org/2017/02/04/the-new-qemu-website-is-up/
A 'git-publish' utility was created to make above process less
cumbersome, and is highly recommended for making regular contributions,
or even just for sending consecutive patch series revisions. It also
requires a working 'git send-email' setup, and by default doesn't
automate everything, so you may want to go through the above steps
manually for once.
For installation instructions, please go to
https://github.com/stefanha/git-publish
The workflow with 'git-publish' is:
$ git checkout master -b my-feature
$ # work on new commits, add your 'Signed-off-by' lines to each
$ git publish
Your patch series will be sent and tagged as my-feature-v1 if you need to refer
back to it in the future.
Sending v2:
$ git checkout my-feature # same topic branch
$ # making changes to the commits (using 'git rebase', for example)
$ git publish
Your patch series will be sent with 'v2' tag in the subject and the git tip
will be tagged as my-feature-v2.
Bug reporting
=============
The QEMU project uses Launchpad as its primary upstream bug tracker. Bugs
found when running code built from QEMU git or upstream released sources
should be reported via:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/
If using QEMU via an operating system vendor pre-built binary package, it
is preferable to report bugs to the vendor's own bug tracker first. If
the bug is also known to affect latest upstream code, it can also be
reported via launchpad.
For additional information on bug reporting consult:
https://qemu.org/Contribute/ReportABug
Contact
=======
The QEMU community can be contacted in a number of ways, with the two
main methods being email and IRC
- qemu-devel@nongnu.org
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel
- #qemu on irc.oftc.net
Information on additional methods of contacting the community can be
found online via the QEMU website:
https://qemu.org/Contribute/StartHere
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