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Michael Chang 0454b04453 lvm: Add LVM cache logical volume handling
The LVM cache logical volume is the logical volume consisting of the original
and the cache pool logical volume. The original is usually on a larger and
slower storage device while the cache pool is on a smaller and faster one. The
performance of the original volume can be improved by storing the frequently
used data on the cache pool to utilize the greater performance of faster
device.

The default cache mode "writethrough" ensures that any data written will be
stored both in the cache and on the origin LV, therefore grub can be straight
to read the original lv as no data loss is guarenteed.

The second cache mode is "writeback", which delays writing from the cache pool
back to the origin LV to have increased performance. The drawback is potential
data loss if losing the associated cache device.

During the boot time grub reads the LVM offline i.e. LVM volumes are not
activated and mounted, hence it should be fine to read directly from original
lv since all cached data should have been flushed back in the process of taking
it offline.

It is also not much helpful to the situation by adding fsync calls to the
install code. The fsync did not force to write back dirty cache to the original
device and rather it would update associated cache metadata to complete the
write transaction with the cache device. IOW the writes to cached blocks still
go only to the cache device.

To write back dirty cache, as LVM cache did not support dirty cache flush per
block range, there'no way to do it for file. On the other hand the "cleaner"
policy is implemented and can be used to write back "all" dirty blocks in a
cache, which effectively drain all dirty cache gradually to attain and last in
the "clean" state, which can be useful for shrinking or decommissioning a
cache. The result and effect is not what we are looking for here.

In conclusion, as it seems no way to enforce file writes to the original
device, grub may suffer from power failure as it cannot assemble the cache
device and read the dirty data from it. However since the case is only
applicable to writeback mode which is sensitive to data lost in nature, I'd
still like to propose my (relatively simple) patch and treat reading dirty
cache as improvement.

Signed-off-by: Michael Chang <mchang@suse.com>
Reviewed-by: Daniel Kiper <daniel.kiper@oracle.com>
2020-03-31 11:59:35 +02:00
asm-tests asm-tests/i386-pc: Check that movl is 5 bytes. 2016-09-28 20:31:04 +03:00
conf gettext: Restore patches to po/Makefile.in.in 2020-03-10 21:17:54 +01:00
docs gettext: Restore patches to po/Makefile.in.in 2020-03-10 21:17:54 +01:00
grub-core lvm: Add LVM cache logical volume handling 2020-03-31 11:59:35 +02:00
include efi: Fix the type of grub_efi_status_t 2020-03-10 21:42:31 +01:00
po po: Fix replacement of %m in sed programs 2020-03-10 21:32:09 +01:00
tests syslinux: Fix syslinux_test in out-of-tree builds 2019-03-05 10:27:53 +01:00
themes/starfield Starfield theme. 2012-02-23 17:21:38 +01:00
unicode * unicode: Import Unicode 6.0 data. 2011-12-25 16:17:25 +01:00
util misc: Make grub_strtol() "end" pointers have safer const qualifiers 2020-02-28 12:41:29 +01:00
.gitattributes gitattributes: Mark po/exclude.pot as binary so git won't try to diff nonprintables 2019-09-23 13:17:15 +02:00
.gitignore gnulib: Upgrade Gnulib and switch to bootstrap tool 2019-03-05 10:48:12 +01:00
.travis.yml travis: Add Travis CI config file 2019-02-25 14:02:06 +01:00
acinclude.m4 Fix -nopie/-nopie check. 2017-01-30 19:38:55 +01:00
AUTHORS 2005-09-03 Yoshinori K. Okuji <okuji@enbug.org> 2005-09-03 16:54:27 +00:00
autogen.sh POTFILES: Don't include gnulib in grub.pot 2019-03-26 15:04:17 +01:00
bootstrap gnulib: Upgrade Gnulib and switch to bootstrap tool 2019-03-05 10:48:12 +01:00
bootstrap.conf gettext: Restore patches to po/Makefile.in.in 2020-03-10 21:17:54 +01:00
BUGS * BUGS: New file. 2011-01-11 00:06:01 +01:00
ChangeLog-2015 Autogenerate ChangeLog from git changelog. 2015-01-24 17:29:50 +01:00
config.h.in Remove libgcc dependency. 2015-03-03 20:50:37 +01:00
configure.ac build: Fix option to explicitly disable memory debugging 2020-03-10 21:56:39 +01:00
COPYING 2007-07-22 Yoshinori K. Okuji <okuji@enbug.org> 2007-07-21 23:32:33 +00:00
coreboot.cfg * coreboot.cfg: Add missing file. 2013-11-20 00:52:23 +01:00
geninit.sh automake commit without merge history 2010-05-06 11:34:04 +05:30
gentpl.py RISC-V: Add to build system 2019-02-25 14:02:05 +01:00
INSTALL gnulib: Upgrade Gnulib and switch to bootstrap tool 2019-03-05 10:48:12 +01:00
linguas.sh linguas: Don't skip ko.po. 2017-02-04 00:06:57 +01:00
Makefile.am Makefile: Make libgrub.pp depend on config-util.h 2020-03-10 21:39:53 +01:00
Makefile.util.def grub-editenv: Make grub-editenv chase symlinks including those across devices 2020-02-18 15:16:02 +01:00
NEWS Release 2.04 2019-07-04 15:57:30 +02:00
README README: Remove dead link to the wiki 2015-11-06 04:31:23 +01:00
THANKS 2009-12-11 Robert Millan <rmh.grub@aybabtu.com> 2009-12-11 22:44:47 +00:00
TODO TODO: Remove obsolete link 2016-02-12 17:51:52 +01:00

This is GRUB 2, the second version of the GRand Unified Bootloader.
GRUB 2 is rewritten from scratch to make GNU GRUB cleaner, safer, more
robust, more powerful, and more portable.

See the file NEWS for a description of recent changes to GRUB 2.

See the file INSTALL for instructions on how to build and install the
GRUB 2 data and program files.

Please visit the official web page of GRUB 2, for more information.
The URL is <http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub.html>.

More extensive documentation is available in the Info manual,
accessible using 'info grub' after building and installing GRUB 2.

There are a number of important user-visible differences from the
first version of GRUB, now known as GRUB Legacy. For a summary, please
see:

  info grub Introduction 'Changes from GRUB Legacy'