Especially when O_DIRECT is used with image files so that the page cache
indirection can't cause a merge of allocating requests, the file will
fragment on the file system layer, with a potentially very small
fragment size (this depends on the requests the guest sent).
On Linux, fragmentation can be reduced by setting an extent size hint
when creating the file (at least on XFS, it can't be set any more after
the first extent has been allocated), basically giving raw files a
"cluster size" for allocation.
This adds a create option to set the extent size hint, and changes the
default from not setting a hint to setting it to 1 MB. The main reason
why qcow2 defaults to smaller cluster sizes is that COW becomes more
expensive, which is not an issue with raw files, so we can choose a
larger size. The tradeoff here is only potentially wasted disk space.
For qcow2 (or other image formats) over file-posix, the advantage should
even be greater because they grow sequentially without leaving holes, so
there won't be wasted space. Setting even larger extent size hints for
such images may make sense. This can be done with the new option, but
let's keep the default conservative for now.
The effect is very visible with a test that intentionally creates a
badly fragmented file with qemu-img bench (the time difference while
creating the file is already remarkable) and then looks at the number of
extents and the time a simple "qemu-img map" takes.
Without an extent size hint:
$ ./qemu-img create -f raw -o extent_size_hint=0 ~/tmp/test.raw 10G
Formatting '/home/kwolf/tmp/test.raw', fmt=raw size=10737418240 extent_size_hint=0
$ ./qemu-img bench -f raw -t none -n -w ~/tmp/test.raw -c 1000000 -S 8192 -o 0
Sending 1000000 write requests, 4096 bytes each, 64 in parallel (starting at offset 0, step size 8192)
Run completed in 25.848 seconds.
$ ./qemu-img bench -f raw -t none -n -w ~/tmp/test.raw -c 1000000 -S 8192 -o 4096
Sending 1000000 write requests, 4096 bytes each, 64 in parallel (starting at offset 4096, step size 8192)
Run completed in 19.616 seconds.
$ filefrag ~/tmp/test.raw
/home/kwolf/tmp/test.raw: 2000000 extents found
$ time ./qemu-img map ~/tmp/test.raw
Offset Length Mapped to File
0 0x1e8480000 0 /home/kwolf/tmp/test.raw
real 0m1,279s
user 0m0,043s
sys 0m1,226s
With the new default extent size hint of 1 MB:
$ ./qemu-img create -f raw -o extent_size_hint=1M ~/tmp/test.raw 10G
Formatting '/home/kwolf/tmp/test.raw', fmt=raw size=10737418240 extent_size_hint=1048576
$ ./qemu-img bench -f raw -t none -n -w ~/tmp/test.raw -c 1000000 -S 8192 -o 0
Sending 1000000 write requests, 4096 bytes each, 64 in parallel (starting at offset 0, step size 8192)
Run completed in 11.833 seconds.
$ ./qemu-img bench -f raw -t none -n -w ~/tmp/test.raw -c 1000000 -S 8192 -o 4096
Sending 1000000 write requests, 4096 bytes each, 64 in parallel (starting at offset 4096, step size 8192)
Run completed in 10.155 seconds.
$ filefrag ~/tmp/test.raw
/home/kwolf/tmp/test.raw: 178 extents found
$ time ./qemu-img map ~/tmp/test.raw
Offset Length Mapped to File
0 0x1e8480000 0 /home/kwolf/tmp/test.raw
real 0m0,061s
user 0m0,040s
sys 0m0,014s
Signed-off-by: Kevin Wolf <kwolf@redhat.com>
Message-Id: <20200707142329.48303-1-kwolf@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Kevin Wolf <kwolf@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:
.. code-block:: shell
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.
.. code-block:: shell
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 CODING_STYLE.rst file.
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.
.. code-block:: shell
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:
.. code-block:: shell
$ 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:
.. code-block:: shell
$ 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
* `<mailto: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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