summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/man/sd_readahead.xml
blob: 2e7e09c5ecce245fb77643d8f81fa8bfa57eab13 (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
<?xml version='1.0'?> <!--*-nxml-*-->
<!DOCTYPE refentry PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.2//EN"
        "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd">

<!--
  This file is part of systemd.

  Copyright 2010 Lennart Poettering

  systemd is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
  under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
  the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
  (at your option) any later version.

  systemd is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
  WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
  General Public License for more details.

  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  along with systemd; If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
-->

<refentry id="sd_notify">

        <refentryinfo>
                <title>sd_readahead</title>
                <productname>systemd</productname>

                <authorgroup>
                        <author>
                                <contrib>Developer</contrib>
                                <firstname>Lennart</firstname>
                                <surname>Poettering</surname>
                                <email>lennart@poettering.net</email>
                        </author>
                </authorgroup>
        </refentryinfo>

        <refmeta>
                <refentrytitle>sd_readahead</refentrytitle>
                <manvolnum>3</manvolnum>
        </refmeta>

        <refnamediv>
                <refname>sd_readahead</refname>
                <refpurpose>Control ongoing disk boot-time read-ahead operations</refpurpose>
        </refnamediv>

        <refsynopsisdiv>
                <funcsynopsis>
                        <funcsynopsisinfo>#include "sd-readahead.h"</funcsynopsisinfo>

                        <funcprototype>
                                <funcdef>int <function>sd_readahead</function></funcdef>
                                <paramdef>const char *<parameter>action</parameter></paramdef>
                        </funcprototype>
                </funcsynopsis>
        </refsynopsisdiv>

        <refsect1>
                <title>Description</title>
                <para><function>sd_readahead()</function> may be
                called by programs involved with early boot-up to
                control ongoing boot-time disk read-ahead operations. It may be
                used to terminate read-ahead operations in case an
                uncommon disk access pattern is to be expected and
                hence read-ahead replay or collection is unlikely to
                have the desired speed-up effect on the current or
                future boot-ups.</para>

                <para>The <parameter>action</parameter> should be one
                of the following strings:</para>

                <variablelist>
                        <varlistentry>
                                <term>cancel</term>

                                <listitem><para>Terminates read-ahead
                                data collection, and drops all
                                read-ahead data collected during this
                                boot-up.</para></listitem>
                        </varlistentry>

                        <varlistentry>
                                <term>done</term>

                                <listitem><para>Terminates read-ahead
                                data collection, but keeps all
                                read-ahead data collected during this
                                boot-up around for use during
                                subsequent boot-ups.</para></listitem>
                        </varlistentry>

                        <varlistentry>
                                <term>noreplay</term>

                                <listitem><para>Terminates read-ahead
                                replay.</para></listitem>
                        </varlistentry>

                </variablelist>

        </refsect1>

        <refsect1>
                <title>Return Value</title>

                <para>On failure, these calls return a negative
                errno-style error code. It is generally recommended to
                ignore the return value of this call.</para>
        </refsect1>

        <refsect1>
                <title>Notes</title>

                <para>This function is provided by the reference
                implementation of APIs for controlling boot-time
                read-ahead and distributed with the systemd
                package. The algorithm it implements is simple, and
                can easily be reimplemented in daemons if it is
                important to support this interface without using the
                reference implementation.</para>

                <para>Internally, this function creates a file in
                <filename>/run/systemd/readahead/</filename> which is
                then used as flag file to notify the read-ahead
                subsystem.</para>

                <para>For details about the algorithm check the
                liberally licensed reference implementation sources:
                <ulink url="http://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/plain/src/readahead/sd-readahead.c"/>
                resp. <ulink
                url="http://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/plain/src/systemd/sd-readahead.h"/></para>

                <para><function>sd_readahead()</function> is
                implemented in the reference implementation's drop-in
                <filename>sd-readahead.c</filename> and
                <filename>sd-readahead.h</filename> files. It is
                recommended that applications consuming this API copy
                the implementation into their source tree. For more
                details about the reference implementation see
                <citerefentry><refentrytitle>sd-readahead</refentrytitle><manvolnum>7</manvolnum></citerefentry></para>

                <para>If -DDISABLE_SYSTEMD is set during compilation
                this function will always return 0 and otherwise
                become a NOP.</para>
        </refsect1>

        <refsect1>
                <title>Examples</title>

                <example>
                        <title>Cancelling all read-ahead operations</title>

                        <para>During boots where SELinux has to
                        relabel the file system hierarchy, it will
                        create a large amount of disk accesses that
                        are not necessary during normal boots. Hence
                        it is a good idea to disable both read-ahead replay and read-ahead collection.
                        </para>

                        <programlisting>sd_readahead("cancel");
sd_readahead("noreplay");</programlisting>
                </example>

        </refsect1>

        <refsect1>
                <title>See Also</title>
                <para>
                        <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
                        <citerefentry><refentrytitle>sd-readahead</refentrytitle><manvolnum>7</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
                        <citerefentry><refentrytitle>daemon</refentrytitle><manvolnum>7</manvolnum></citerefentry>
                </para>
        </refsect1>

</refentry>