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History

John Baldwin fdcc1cc09f Use thread0.td_ucred instead of proc0.p_ucred. This change is cosmetic and isn't strictly required. However, it lowers the number of false positives found when grep'ing the kernel sources for p_ucred to ensure proper locking.		2002-02-27 19:18:10 +00:00
..
ffs_alloc.c	Occationally background fsck would cause a spurious ``freeing free	2002-02-07 22:13:56 +00:00
ffs_balloc.c	When taking a snapshot, we must check for active files that have	2002-02-02 01:42:44 +00:00
ffs_extern.h	When taking a snapshot, we must check for active files that have	2002-02-02 01:42:44 +00:00
ffs_inode.c	When taking a snapshot, we must check for active files that have	2002-02-02 01:42:44 +00:00
ffs_snapshot.c	Use thread0.td_ucred instead of proc0.p_ucred. This change is cosmetic	2002-02-27 19:18:10 +00:00
ffs_softdep_stub.c	Add a stub for softdep_request_cleanup() so that compilation without	2002-01-23 02:18:56 +00:00
ffs_softdep.c	Simple p_ucred -> td_ucred changes to start using the per-thread ucred	2002-02-27 18:32:23 +00:00
ffs_subr.c
ffs_tables.c
ffs_vfsops.c	Simple p_ucred -> td_ucred changes to start using the per-thread ucred	2002-02-27 18:32:23 +00:00
ffs_vnops.c	KSE Milestone 2	2001-09-12 08:38:13 +00:00
fs.h	Fix a bug introduced in ffs_snapshot.c -r1.25 and fs.h -r1.26	2002-01-17 08:33:32 +00:00
README.snapshot
README.softupdates
softdep.h	When a new block is allocated to a directory, an fsync of a file	2001-05-17 07:24:03 +00:00

README.softupdates

$FreeBSD$

Using Soft Updates

To enable the soft updates feature in your kernel, add option
SOFTUPDATES to your kernel configuration.

Once you are running a kernel with soft update support, you need to enable
it for whichever filesystems you wish to run with the soft update policy.
This is done with the -n option to tunefs(8) on the UNMOUNTED filesystems,
e.g. from single-user mode you'd do something like:

	tunefs -n enable /usr

To permanently enable soft updates on the /usr filesystem (or at least
until a corresponding ``tunefs -n disable'' is done).


Soft Updates Copyright Restrictions

As of June 2000 the restrictive copyright has been removed and 
replaced with a `Berkeley-style' copyright. The files implementing
soft updates now reside in the sys/ufs/ffs directory and are
compiled into the generic kernel by default.


Soft Updates Status

The soft updates code has been running in production on many
systems for the past two years generally quite successfully.
The two current sets of shortcomings are:

1) On filesystems that are chronically full, the two minute lag
   from the time a file is deleted until its free space shows up
   will result in premature filesystem full failures. This
   failure mode is most evident in small filesystems such as
   the root. For this reason, use of soft updates is not
   recommended on the root filesystem.

2) If your system routines runs parallel processes each of which
   remove many files, the kernel memory rate limiting code may
   not be able to slow removal operations to a level sustainable
   by the disk subsystem. The result is that the kernel runs out
   of memory and hangs.

Both of these problems are being addressed, but have not yet
been resolved. There are no other known problems at this time.


How Soft Updates Work

For more general information on soft updates, please see:
	http://www.mckusick.com/softdep/
	http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/papers/CSE-TR-254-95/

--
Marshall Kirk McKusick <mckusick@mckusick.com>
July 2000