NAME

     buf — kernel buffer I/O scheme used in FreeBSD VM system

DESCRIPTION

     The kernel implements a KVM abstraction of the buffer cache which allows it to map
     potentially disparate vm_page's into contiguous KVM for use by (mainly file system) devices
     and device I/O.  This abstraction supports block sizes from DEV_BSIZE (usually 512) to
     upwards of several pages or more.  It also supports a relatively primitive byte-granular
     valid range and dirty range currently hardcoded for use by NFS.  The code implementing the
     VM Buffer abstraction is mostly concentrated in /usr/src/sys/kern/vfs_bio.c.

     One of the most important things to remember when dealing with buffer pointers (struct buf)
     is that the underlying pages are mapped directly from the buffer cache.  No data copying
     occurs in the scheme proper, though some file systems such as UFS do have to copy a little
     when dealing with file fragments.  The second most important thing to remember is that due
     to the underlying page mapping, the b_data base pointer in a buf is always *page* aligned,
     not *block* aligned.  When you have a VM buffer representing some b_offset and b_size, the
     actual start of the buffer is (b_data + (b_offset & PAGE_MASK)) and not just b_data.
     Finally, the VM system's core buffer cache supports valid and dirty bits (m->valid,
     m->dirty) for pages in DEV_BSIZE chunks.  Thus a platform with a hardware page size of 4096
     bytes has 8 valid and 8 dirty bits.  These bits are generally set and cleared in groups
     based on the device block size of the device backing the page.  Complete page's worth are
     often referred to using the VM_PAGE_BITS_ALL bitmask (i.e., 0xFF if the hardware page size
     is 4096).

     VM buffers also keep track of a byte-granular dirty range and valid range.  This feature is
     normally only used by the NFS subsystem.  I am not sure why it is used at all, actually,
     since we have DEV_BSIZE valid/dirty granularity within the VM buffer.  If a buffer dirty
     operation creates a 'hole', the dirty range will extend to cover the hole.  If a buffer
     validation operation creates a 'hole' the byte-granular valid range is left alone and will
     not take into account the new extension.  Thus the whole byte-granular abstraction is
     considered a bad hack and it would be nice if we could get rid of it completely.

     A VM buffer is capable of mapping the underlying VM cache pages into KVM in order to allow
     the kernel to directly manipulate the data associated with the (vnode,b_offset,b_size).  The
     kernel typically unmaps VM buffers the moment they are no longer needed but often keeps the
     'struct buf' structure instantiated and even bp->b_pages array instantiated despite having
     unmapped them from KVM.  If a page making up a VM buffer is about to undergo I/O, the system
     typically unmaps it from KVM and replaces the page in the b_pages[] array with a place-
     marker called bogus_page.  The place-marker forces any kernel subsystems referencing the
     associated struct buf to re-lookup the associated page.  I believe the place-marker hack is
     used to allow sophisticated devices such as file system devices to remap underlying pages in
     order to deal with, for example, re-mapping a file fragment into a file block.

     VM buffers are used to track I/O operations within the kernel.  Unfortunately, the I/O
     implementation is also somewhat of a hack because the kernel wants to clear the dirty bit on
     the underlying pages the moment it queues the I/O to the VFS device, not when the physical
     I/O is actually initiated.  This can create confusion within file system devices that use
     delayed-writes because you wind up with pages marked clean that are actually still dirty.
     If not treated carefully, these pages could be thrown away!  Indeed, a number of serious
     bugs related to this hack were not fixed until the 2.2.8/3.0 release.  The kernel uses an
     instantiated VM buffer (i.e., struct buf) to place-mark pages in this special state.  The
     buffer is typically flagged B_DELWRI.  When a device no longer needs a buffer it typically
     flags it as B_RELBUF.  Due to the underlying pages being marked clean, the B_DELWRI|B_RELBUF
     combination must be interpreted to mean that the buffer is still actually dirty and must be
     written to its backing store before it can actually be released.  In the case where B_DELWRI
     is not set, the underlying dirty pages are still properly marked as dirty and the buffer can
     be completely freed without losing that clean/dirty state information.  (XXX do we have to
     check other flags in regards to this situation ???)

     The kernel reserves a portion of its KVM space to hold VM Buffer's data maps.  Even though
     this is virtual space (since the buffers are mapped from the buffer cache), we cannot make
     it arbitrarily large because instantiated VM Buffers (struct buf's) prevent their underlying
     pages in the buffer cache from being freed.  This can complicate the life of the paging
     system.

HISTORY

     The buf manual page was originally written by Matthew Dillon and first appeared in
     FreeBSD 3.1, December 1998.