The block cache implementation in loader has proven to be almost useless, and in worst case even slowing down the disk reads due to insufficient cache size and extra memory copy.
Also the current cache implementation does not cache reads from CDs, or work with zfs built on top of multiple disks.
Instead of an LRU, this code uses a simple hash (O(1) read from cache), and instead of a single global cache, a separate cache per block device.
The cache also implements limited read-ahead to increase performance.
To simplify read ahead management, the read ahead will not wrap over bcache end, so in worst case, single block physical read will be performed to fill the last block in bcache.
Booting from a virtual CD over IPMI:
0ms latency, before: 27 second, after: 7 seconds
60ms latency, before: over 12 minutes, after: under 5 minutes.
Submitted by: Toomas Soome <tsoome@me.com>
Reviewed by: delphij (previous version), emaste (previous version)
Relnotes: yes
Differential Revision: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D4713
The initial IOCTL implementation supports reading disk physical
geometry.
Two additional functions were added. They allow reading/writing raw
data to the disk (default partition).
Submitted by: Wojciech Macek <wma@semihalf.com>
Obtained from: Semihalf
Sponsored by: Juniper Networks Inc.
Differential Revision: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D4143
The detach function is called very often, for example from
get_capacity function. We don't want to loose any pointers
here, so disable detaching for umass driver.
Submitted by: Wojciech Macek <wma@semihalf.com>
Obtained from: Semihalf
Sponsored by: Juniper Networks Inc.
Differential Revision: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D4141
