Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC] Disk integrity in QEMU

[Anthony Liguori]

Aurelien Jarno wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 09, 2008 at 12:00:41PM -0500, Anthony Liguori wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>   
> > So to summarize, I think we should enable O_DSYNC by default to ensure  
> > that guest data integrity is not dependent on the host OS, and that  
> > practically speaking, cache=off is only useful for very specialized  
> > circumstances.  Part of the patch I'll follow up with includes changes  
> > to the man page to document all of this for users.
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> >     
>
> While I agree O_DSYNC should be the defaults, I wonder if we should keep
> the current behaviour available for those who want it. We can imagine
> the following options:
>   cache=off     O_DIRECT
>   cache=read    O_DSYNC         (default)
>   

Or maybe cache=off, cache=on, cache=wb.  So that the default was 
cache=on which is write-through, or the user can choose write-back caching.

But that said, I'm concerned that this is far too confusing for users.  
I don't think anyone is relying on disk write performance when in 
write-back mode simply because the guest already has a page cache so 
writes are already being completed instantaneously from the 
application's perspective.


Regards,

Anthony Liguori
>   cache=on      0
>
>