Re: A snapshot is not (really) a cow

[Christian Limpach <Christian.Limpach@cl.cam.ac.uk>]

On Sun, Sep 26, 2004 at 12:38:06PM +0100, Peri Hankey wrote:
> I always found the lvm2 'snapshot' terminology confusing - the thing 
> created as a 'snapshot' is what accepts changes while a backup is made 
> of the original volume.

I don't think that's the terminology the LVM2 people use.  The regular
use is to create a snapshot and backup this snapshot while you keep
using the original.

> # drat - I needed another domain
> lvcreate -L512M -s -n u4 /dev/vmgroup/root_file_system
> ... nasty messages .... all xenU domains dead ....
> ... lmv2 system in inconsistent state ...
> ... /dev/vmgroup/u4 doesn't exist ...
> ... /dev/mapper/root_file_system-u4 does exist ...

This should work, if it doesn't then it would seem to be a bug in
LVM2.  Since you mention out of memory error messages, are you sure
that you're not running out of memory in dom0?

> The problem is that the 'snapshot' cows hold onto each other's tails - 
> they seem to be held in a list linked (I think) from the original 
> logical volume (here /dev/vmgroup/root_file_system). For their intended 
> use as enabling backup, this seems to be meant to allow writes to the 
> original volume to be propagated to all 'snapshots' created against that 
> volume - there are comments about getting rid of the 'snapshots' after 
> the backup has been done because this propagation of writes hits 
> performance.
>
> For my requirements, and I imagine for most others reading this list, 
> all of this is superfluous. I don't need
> 
>     original -> snap1 -> snap2 -> snap3 ...

This is not the layout LVM2 uses.  If you look at the output of
``dmsetup table'', you'll see that each snapshot is independent
and only refers to the device it is a snapshot of and to its cow
device which will hold modifications.

> so that I can't create a new snap4 while any of the others are in use.
> 
> I just need
> 
>     original <- cow1
>     original <- cow2
>     original <- cow3
>     original <- cow4
>     ...
> 
> where A '<-' B means B is a cow image of A, and where each of the cows 
> is independent of the others so that a new cow can be created at any 
> time, regardless how many others are active.

This is the layout LVM2 uses.  And it is indeed simple (and should be
quite robust) as long as you don't want to write to the original.
If you write to the original, you will have to copy the changed
blocks to every snapshot's cow device.  I think I've seen this
fail when having multiple snapshots and writing to the original.
But since you didn't write to the original (and one generally doesn't
need/want to write to the original in our case), that problem
is unlikely to be relevant to the failure you've seen.

    christian



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