Re: [PATCH 2/2] file-posix: Cache next hole

[Eric Blake]

On 2/11/21 11:22 AM, Max Reitz wrote:
> We have repeatedly received reports that SEEK_HOLE and SEEK_DATA are
> slow on certain filesystems and/or under certain circumstances.  That is
> why we generally try to avoid it (which is why bdrv_co_block_status()
> has the @want_zero parameter, and which is why qcow2 has a metadata
> preallocation detection, so we do not fall through to the protocol layer
> to discover which blocks are zero, unless that is really necessary
> (i.e., for metadata-preallocated images)).
> 
> In addition to those measures, we can also try to speed up zero
> detection by letting file-posix cache some hole location information,
> namely where the next hole after the most recently queried offset is.
> This helps especially for images that are (nearly) fully allocated,
> which is coincidentally also the case where querying for zero
> information cannot gain us much.
> 
> Note that this of course only works so long as we have no concurrent
> writers to the image, which is the case when the WRITE capability is not
> shared.
> 
> Alternatively (or perhaps as an improvement in the future), we could let
> file-posix keep track of what it knows is zero and what it knows is
> non-zero with bitmaps, which would help images that actually have a
> significant number of holes (where this implementation here cannot do
> much).  But for such images, SEEK_HOLE/DATA are generally faster (they
> do not need to seek through the whole file), and the performance lost by
> querying the block status does not feel as bad because it is outweighed
> by the performance that can be saved by special-cases zeroed areas, so
> focussing on images that are (nearly) fully allocated is more important.

focusing

> 
> Signed-off-by: Max Reitz <mreitz@redhat.com>
> ---
>  block/file-posix.c | 81 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-
>  1 file changed, 80 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
> 

>  static int find_allocation(BlockDriverState *bs, off_t start,
>                             off_t *data, off_t *hole)
>  {
> -#if defined SEEK_HOLE && defined SEEK_DATA
>      BDRVRawState *s = bs->opaque;
> +
> +    if (s->next_zero_offset_valid) {
> +        if (start >= s->next_zero_offset_from && start < 
> s->next_zero_offset) {
> +            *data = start;
> +            *hole = s->next_zero_offset;
> +            return 0;
> +        }
> +    }
> +
> +#if defined SEEK_HOLE && defined SEEK_DATA

Why move the #if? If SEEK_HOLE is not defined, s->next_zero_offset_valid
should never be set, because we'll treat the entire image as data.  But
at the same time, it doesn't hurt, so doesn't stop my review.

Reviewed-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3226
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