[arch-releng] [archiso] saying good-bye to union-fs-method?

[Thomas Bächler]

Am 31.05.2011 18:07, schrieb Thomas Bächler:
>>>> This change from file-to-file level to block-to-block logic.
>>> This actually sounds pretty cool. However, I don't understand how it
>>> works: The squashfs file system is a read-only one, how can we put that
>>> into a block-level snapshot?
>>>
>> Yes, but there are at least one downside: since is not an union-fs,
>> there is no concept of layers. We are currently using "overlay" thats
>> overlap some files on the layer "root-image".
> 
> This is not problematic.
> 
>> About your question: The squasfs image contains only one file... an
>> image of and 4 GiB ext4. There is another small squasfs image with
>> another one file inside that is a "lvm snapshot". So dm device is made
>> via these images loopback mounted...
> 
> Some of this doesn't make sense to me right now (especially the second
> squashfs image).
> 
> However: With an ext4 loopback inside the squashfs image you loose one
> squashfs feature: metadata compression. I don't know how bad that will
> be though.
> 
> I'll summarize what I think is going on: You mount the squashfs (loop0),
> and set up the ext4 image inside as loop1. You then create a large
> sparse file on tmpfs and set it up as loop2. Then, you create a snapshot
> device (can't use LVM here, can one use the device-mapper snapshot
> target directly?) with loop1 as read-only and loop2 as read-write layer.
> You then mount that device. Sounds doable, but not optimal (a VFS-based
> solution would be way cooler).

Okay, this is how a short test works:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=ro.img bs=1 seek=100M count=1
# dd if=/dev/zero of=cow.img bs=1 seek=100M count=1
# mkfs.ext4 -F ro.img
# losetup /dev/loop0 ro.img
# losetup /dev/loop1 cow.img
# mount /dev/loop0 /some/path
(put some stuff into /some/path)
# umount /some/path
# echo "0 $(blockdev --getsize /dev/loop0) snapshot /dev/loop0
/dev/loop1 N 8" | dmsetup create snapshottest
(8 ist the "chunk size" here, which is now 8 sectors. no idea what a
good value might be)
# mount /dev/mapper/snapshottest /mnt/other
(do whatever you want in /mnt/other)
# umount /mnt/other
# dmsetup remove snapshottest
# losetup -d /dev/loop0
# losetup -d /dev/loop1

In archiso, the file 'ro.img' would be inside squashfs, while 'cow.img'
would be in a tmpfs. Noteagain that we might get worse compression with
a single file in squashfs, compared to a real read-only squashfs - we
could consider making part of the file system entirely read-only, not sure.

This seems fairly easy to implement on the mounting side. Creation of
the ext4 should be pretty straightforward, too.

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