From 119e9db233ad0f4cbd4cfb9f9385a7bca378b37d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Zeng Chi Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2026 18:24:42 +0800 Subject: KVM: Don't pre-reserve xarray entries when storing empty/NULL attributes Skip the xarray reservation loop when clearing all memory attributes, as storing NULL only erases the entry and never needs to allocate, so no reservation (and no cleanup of a failed one) is required in that case. Suggested-by: Sean Christopherson Cc: David Ballesteros Signed-off-by: Zeng Chi Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260921102442.1232375-1-zeng_chi911@163.com [sean: split to separate patch] Signed-off-by: Sean Christopherson --- Documentation/admin-guide/bcache.rst | 644 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 644 insertions(+) create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/bcache.rst (limited to 'Documentation/admin-guide/bcache.rst') diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/bcache.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/bcache.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000..325816edb --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/bcache.rst @@ -0,0 +1,644 @@ +============================ +A block layer cache (bcache) +============================ + +Say you've got a big slow raid 6, and an ssd or three. Wouldn't it be +nice if you could use them as cache... Hence bcache. + +The bcache wiki can be found at: + https://bcache.evilpiepirate.org + +This is the git repository of bcache-tools: + https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/colyli/bcache-tools.git/ + +The latest bcache kernel code can be found from mainline Linux kernel: + https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/ + +It's designed around the performance characteristics of SSDs - it only allocates +in erase block sized buckets, and it uses a hybrid btree/log to track cached +extents (which can be anywhere from a single sector to the bucket size). It's +designed to avoid random writes at all costs. + +Both writethrough and writeback caching are supported. Writeback defaults to +off, but can be switched on and off arbitrarily at runtime. Bcache goes to +great lengths to protect your data - it reliably handles unclean shutdown. (It +doesn't even have a notion of a clean shutdown; bcache simply doesn't return +writes as completed until they're on stable storage). + +Writeback caching can use most of the cache for buffering writes - writing +dirty data to the backing device is always done sequentially, scanning from the +start to the end of the index. + +Since random IO is what SSDs excel at, there generally won't be much benefit +to caching large sequential IO. Bcache detects sequential IO and skips it; +it also keeps a rolling average of the IO sizes per task, and as long as the +average is above the cutoff it will skip all IO from that task - instead of +caching the first 512k after every seek. Backups and large file copies should +thus entirely bypass the cache. + +In the event of a data IO error on the flash it will try to recover by reading +from disk or invalidating cache entries. For unrecoverable errors (meta data +or dirty data), caching is automatically disabled; if dirty data was present +in the cache it first disables writeback caching and waits for all dirty data +to be flushed. + +Getting started: +You'll need bcache util from the bcache-tools repository. Both the cache device +and backing device must be formatted before use:: + + bcache make -B /dev/sdb + bcache make -C /dev/sdc + +`bcache make` has the ability to format multiple devices at the same time - if +you format your backing devices and cache device at the same time, you won't +have to manually attach:: + + bcache make -B /dev/sda /dev/sdb -C /dev/sdc + +If your bcache-tools is not updated to latest version and does not have the +unified `bcache` utility, you may use the legacy `make-bcache` utility to format +bcache device with same -B and -C parameters. + +bcache-tools now ships udev rules, and bcache devices are known to the kernel +immediately. Without udev, you can manually register devices like this:: + + echo /dev/sdb > /sys/fs/bcache/register + echo /dev/sdc > /sys/fs/bcache/register + +Registering the backing device makes the bcache device show up in /dev; you can +now format it and use it as normal. But the first time using a new bcache +device, it'll be running in passthrough mode until you attach it to a cache. +If you are thinking about using bcache later, it is recommended to setup all your +slow devices as bcache backing devices without a cache, and you can choose to add +a caching device later. +See 'ATTACHING' section below. + +The devices show up as:: + + /dev/bcache + +As well as (with udev):: + + /dev/bcache/by-uuid/ + /dev/bcache/by-label/