block: posix: Always allocate the first block

When creating an image with preallocation "off" or "falloc", the first
block of the image is typically not allocated. When using Gluster
storage backed by XFS filesystem, reading this block using direct I/O
succeeds regardless of request length, fooling alignment detection.

In this case we fallback to a safe value (4096) instead of the optimal
value (512), which may lead to unneeded data copying when aligning
requests.  Allocating the first block avoids the fallback.

Since we allocate the first block even with preallocation=off, we no
longer create images with zero disk size:

    $ ./qemu-img create -f raw test.raw 1g
    Formatting 'test.raw', fmt=raw size=1073741824

    $ ls -lhs test.raw
    4.0K -rw-r--r--. 1 nsoffer nsoffer 1.0G Aug 16 23:48 test.raw

And converting the image requires additional cluster:

    $ ./qemu-img measure -f raw -O qcow2 test.raw
    required size: 458752
    fully allocated size: 1074135040

When using format like vmdk with multiple files per image, we allocate
one block per file:

    $ ./qemu-img create -f vmdk -o subformat=twoGbMaxExtentFlat test.vmdk 4g
    Formatting 'test.vmdk', fmt=vmdk size=4294967296 compat6=off hwversion=undefined subformat=twoGbMaxExtentFlat

    $ ls -lhs test*.vmdk
    4.0K -rw-r--r--. 1 nsoffer nsoffer 2.0G Aug 27 03:23 test-f001.vmdk
    4.0K -rw-r--r--. 1 nsoffer nsoffer 2.0G Aug 27 03:23 test-f002.vmdk
    4.0K -rw-r--r--. 1 nsoffer nsoffer  353 Aug 27 03:23 test.vmdk

I did quick performance test for copying disks with qemu-img convert to
new raw target image to Gluster storage with sector size of 512 bytes:

    for i in $(seq 10); do
        rm -f dst.raw
        sleep 10
        time ./qemu-img convert -f raw -O raw -t none -T none src.raw dst.raw
    done

Here is a table comparing the total time spent:

Type    Before(s)   After(s)    Diff(%)
---------------------------------------
real      530.028    469.123      -11.4
user       17.204     10.768      -37.4
sys        17.881      7.011      -60.7

We can see very clear improvement in CPU usage.

Signed-off-by: Nir Soffer <nsoffer@redhat.com>
Message-id: 20190827010528.8818-2-nsoffer@redhat.com
Reviewed-by: Max Reitz <mreitz@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Max Reitz <mreitz@redhat.com>

1 files changed, 13 insertions, 6 deletions

diff --git a/tests/qemu-iotests/175 b/tests/qemu-iotests/175
index 51e62c8..7ba28b3 100755
--- a/tests/qemu-iotests/175
+++ b/tests/qemu-iotests/175
@@ -37,14 +37,16 @@ trap "_cleanup; exit \$status" 0 1 2 3 15
 # the file size.  This function hides the resulting difference in the
 # stat -c '%b' output.
 # Parameter 1: Number of blocks an empty file occupies
-# Parameter 2: Image size in bytes
+# Parameter 2: Minimal number of blocks in an image
+# Parameter 3: Image size in bytes
 _filter_blocks()
 {
     extra_blocks=$1
-    img_size=$2
+    min_blocks=$2
+    img_size=$3
 
-    sed -e "s/blocks=$extra_blocks\\(\$\\|[^0-9]\\)/nothing allocated/" \
-        -e "s/blocks=$((extra_blocks + img_size / 512))\\(\$\\|[^0-9]\\)/everything allocated/"
+    sed -e "s/blocks=$min_blocks\\(\$\\|[^0-9]\\)/min allocation/" \
+        -e "s/blocks=$((extra_blocks + img_size / 512))\\(\$\\|[^0-9]\\)/max allocation/"
 }
 
 # get standard environment, filters and checks
@@ -60,16 +62,21 @@ size=$((1 * 1024 * 1024))
 touch "$TEST_DIR/empty"
 extra_blocks=$(stat -c '%b' "$TEST_DIR/empty")
 
+# We always write the first byte; check how many blocks this filesystem
+# allocates to match empty image alloation.
+printf "\0" > "$TEST_DIR/empty"
+min_blocks=$(stat -c '%b' "$TEST_DIR/empty")
+
 echo
 echo "== creating image with default preallocation =="
 _make_test_img $size | _filter_imgfmt
-stat -c "size=%s, blocks=%b" $TEST_IMG | _filter_blocks $extra_blocks $size
+stat -c "size=%s, blocks=%b" $TEST_IMG | _filter_blocks $extra_blocks $min_blocks $size
 
 for mode in off full falloc; do
     echo
     echo "== creating image with preallocation $mode =="
     IMGOPTS=preallocation=$mode _make_test_img $size | _filter_imgfmt
-    stat -c "size=%s, blocks=%b" $TEST_IMG | _filter_blocks $extra_blocks $size
+    stat -c "size=%s, blocks=%b" $TEST_IMG | _filter_blocks $extra_blocks $min_blocks $size
 done
 
 # success, all done