linux/Documentation
Vivek Goyal c86243b090 ovl: provide a mount option "volatile"
Container folks are complaining that dnf/yum issues too many sync while
installing packages and this slows down the image build. Build requirement
is such that they don't care if a node goes down while build was still
going on. In that case, they will simply throw away unfinished layer and
start new build. So they don't care about syncing intermediate state to the
disk and hence don't want to pay the price associated with sync.

So they are asking for mount options where they can disable sync on overlay
mount point.

They primarily seem to have two use cases.

- For building images, they will mount overlay with nosync and then sync
  upper layer after unmounting overlay and reuse upper as lower for next
  layer.

- For running containers, they don't seem to care about syncing upper layer
  because if node goes down, they will simply throw away upper layer and
  create a fresh one.

So this patch provides a mount option "volatile" which disables all forms
of sync. Now it is caller's responsibility to throw away upper if system
crashes or shuts down and start fresh.

With "volatile", I am seeing roughly 20% speed up in my VM where I am just
installing emacs in an image. Installation time drops from 31 seconds to 25
seconds when nosync option is used. This is for the case of building on top
of an image where all packages are already cached. That way I take out the
network operations latency out of the measurement.

Giuseppe is also looking to cut down on number of iops done on the disk. He
is complaining that often in cloud their VMs are throttled if they cross
the limit. This option can help them where they reduce number of iops (by
cutting down on frequent sync and writebacks).

Signed-off-by: Giuseppe Scrivano <gscrivan@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@redhat.com>
2020-09-02 10:58:48 +02:00
..
ABI powerpc/perf/hv-24x7: Move cpumask file to top folder of hv-24x7 driver 2020-08-21 23:35:27 +10:00
accounting
admin-guide Merge branch 'pm-cpufreq' 2020-08-28 20:58:16 +02:00
arm ARM development for 5.9-rc1: 2020-08-06 10:17:00 -07:00
arm64 IOMMU Updates for Linux v5.9 2020-08-11 14:13:24 -07:00
block for-5.9/drivers-20200803 2020-08-05 10:51:40 -07:00
bpf doc: Add link to bpf helpers man page 2020-08-13 22:48:06 +02:00
cdrom A handful of obvious fixes that wandered in during the merge window. 2020-08-13 13:57:45 -07:00
core-api A handful of obvious fixes that wandered in during the merge window. 2020-08-13 13:57:45 -07:00
cpu-freq
crypto It's been a busy cycle for documentation - hopefully the busiest for a 2020-08-04 22:47:54 -07:00
dev-tools A handful of obvious fixes that wandered in during the merge window. 2020-08-13 13:57:45 -07:00
devicetree A set of fixes for interrupt chip drivers: 2020-08-30 11:56:54 -07:00
doc-guide
driver-api - Core Frameworks 2020-08-15 08:09:38 -07:00
fault-injection nvme: rename and document nvme_end_request 2020-08-21 17:14:28 -06:00
fb drm next for 5.9-rc1 2020-08-05 19:50:06 -07:00
features A handful of obvious fixes that wandered in during the merge window. 2020-08-13 13:57:45 -07:00
filesystems ovl: provide a mount option "volatile" 2020-09-02 10:58:48 +02:00
firmware_class
firmware-guide ACPI: Replace HTTP links with HTTPS ones 2020-07-27 14:47:08 +02:00
fpga Char/Misc driver patches for 5.9-rc1 2020-08-05 11:43:47 -07:00
gpu - Core Frameworks 2020-08-11 13:48:02 -07:00
hid
hwmon hwmon updates for v5.9 2020-08-05 13:13:57 -07:00
i2c Merge branch 'i2c/for-5.9' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/wsa/linux 2020-08-13 18:41:00 -07:00
ia64 docs: ia64: correct typo 2020-07-31 11:09:09 -06:00
ide
iio
infiniband
input Input: uinput - fix typo in function name documentation 2020-07-28 18:24:11 -07:00
isdn
kbuild Kbuild updates for v5.9 2020-08-09 14:10:26 -07:00
kernel-hacking
leds LEDs changes for 5.9-rc1. 2020-08-05 19:24:27 -07:00
litmus-tests
livepatch
locking A handful of obvious fixes that wandered in during the merge window. 2020-08-13 13:57:45 -07:00
m68k
maintainer
mhi
mips It's been a busy cycle for documentation - hopefully the busiest for a 2020-08-04 22:47:54 -07:00
misc-devices
netlabel
networking docs: networking: bonding.rst resources section cleanup 2020-08-14 16:44:20 -07:00
nios2
nvdimm
openrisc
parisc
PCI pci-v5.9-changes 2020-08-07 18:48:15 -07:00
pcmcia
power Merge branches 'pm-sleep', 'pm-domains', 'powercap' and 'pm-tools' 2020-08-03 13:12:44 +02:00
powerpc Documentation/powerpc: fix malformed table in syscall64-abi 2020-08-27 17:40:55 +10:00
process A handful of obvious fixes that wandered in during the merge window. 2020-08-13 13:57:45 -07:00
RCU These are the latest RCU bits for v5.9: 2020-08-03 14:31:33 -07:00
riscv
s390 It's been a busy cycle for documentation - hopefully the busiest for a 2020-08-04 22:47:54 -07:00
scheduler sched/doc: Factorize bits between sched-energy.rst & sched-capacity.rst 2020-08-01 09:19:43 +02:00
scsi
security
sh
sound ASoC: Updates for v5.9 2020-08-03 14:41:43 +02:00
sparc
sphinx
sphinx-static
spi
staging remoteproc updates for v5.9 2020-08-11 11:17:45 -07:00
target
timers docs: timers: drop documentation about LB_BIAS 2020-07-23 14:32:44 -06:00
trace A handful of obvious fixes that wandered in during the merge window. 2020-08-13 13:57:45 -07:00
translations A handful of obvious fixes that wandered in during the merge window. 2020-08-13 13:57:45 -07:00
usb
userspace-api remoteproc updates for v5.9 2020-08-11 11:17:45 -07:00
virt powerpc updates for 5.9 2020-08-07 10:33:50 -07:00
vm mm/vmstat: add events for THP migration without split 2020-08-12 10:57:57 -07:00
w1
watchdog watchdog: add support for adjusting last known HW keepalive time 2020-08-05 18:43:02 +02:00
x86 It's been a busy cycle for documentation - hopefully the busiest for a 2020-08-04 22:47:54 -07:00
xtensa
.gitignore
asm-annotations.rst
atomic_bitops.txt
atomic_t.txt
Changes
CodingStyle
conf.py
COPYING-logo
docutils.conf
dontdiff Documentation: dontdiff: Add zstd compressed files 2020-07-31 11:51:10 +02:00
index.rst docs: index.rst: Add watch_queue 2020-07-23 14:13:23 -06:00
Kconfig
logo.gif
Makefile
memory-barriers.txt powerpc updates for 5.9 2020-08-07 10:33:50 -07:00
SubmittingPatches
watch_queue.rst