Re: Cross-project NBD extension proposal: NBD_INFO_INIT_STATE

[Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>]

On 2/10/20 4:12 PM, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 10, 2020 at 03:37:20PM -0600, Eric Blake wrote:
>> For now, only 2 of those 16 bits are defined: NBD_INIT_SPARSE (the
>> image has at least one hole) and NBD_INIT_ZERO (the image reads
>> completely as zero); the two bits are orthogonal and can be set
>> independently, although it is easy enough to see completely sparse
>> files with both bits set.
> 
> I think I'm confused about the exact meaning of NBD_INIT_SPARSE.  Do
> you really mean the whole image is sparse; or (as you seem to have
> said above) that there exists a hole somewhere in the image but we're
> not saying where it is and there can be non-sparse parts of the image?

As implemented:

NBD_INIT_SPARSE - there is at least one hole somewhere (allocation would 
be required to write to that part of the file), but there may b 
allocated data elsewhere in the image.  Most disk images will fit this 
definition (for example, it is very common to have a hole between the 
MBR or GPT and the first partition containing a file system, or for file 
systems themselves to be sparse within the larger block device).

NBD_INIT_ZERO - all bytes read as zero.

The combination NBD_INIT_SPARSE|NBD_INIT_ZERO is common (generally, if 
you use lseek(SEEK_DATA) to prove the entire image reads as zeroes, you 
also know the entire image is sparse), but NBD_INIT_ZERO in isolation is 
also possible (especially with the qcow2 proposal of a persistent 
autoclear bit, where even with a fully preallocated qcow2 image you 
still know it reads as zeroes but there are no holes).  But you are also 
right that for servers that can advertise both bits efficiently, 
NBD_INIT_SPARSE in isolation may be more common than 
NBD_INIT_SPARSE|NBD_INIT_ZERO (the former for most disk images, the 
latter only for a freshly-created image that happens to create with zero 
initialization).

What's more, in my patches, I did NOT patch qemu to set or consume 
INIT_SPARSE; so far, it only sets/consumes INIT_ZERO.  Of course, if we 
can find a reason WHY qemu should track whether a qcow2 image is 
fully-allocated, by demonstrating a qemu-img algorithm that becomes 
easier for knowing if an image is sparse (even if our justification is: 
"when copying an image, I want to know if the _source_ is sparse, to 
know whether I have to bend over backwards to preallocate the 
destination"), then using that in qemu makes sense for my v2 patches. 
But for v1, my only justification was "when copying an image, I can skip 
holes in the source if I know the _destination_ already reads as 
zeroes", which only needed INIT_ZERO.

Some of the nbdkit patches demonstrate the some-vs.-all nature of the 
two bits; for example, in the split plugin, I initialize h->init_sparse 
= false; h->init_zero = true; then in a loop over each file change 
h->init_sparse to true if at least one file was sparse, and change 
h->init_zero to false if at least one file had non-zero contents.

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3226
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org