This post summarizes Linux Kernel new features, bugfixes and changes in Linux 4.9.60 Release. Linux 4.9.60 Release contains 24 changes, patches or new features. In total, there are 64,224 lines of Linux source code changed/added in Linux 4.9.60 release compared to Linux 4.9 release. To view the source code of Linux 4.9.60 kernel release online,…
Sparse files are common in Linux/Unix and are also supported by Windows (e.g. NTFS) and macOSes (e.g. HFS+). Sparse files uses storage efficiently when the files have a lot of holes (contiguous ranges of bytes having the value of zero) by storing only metadata for the holes instead of using real disk blocks. They are…
We may want to add some swap space for a Linux box while only find that all disk space is partitioned and mounted. Some partition has large available free space. For such cases, we may not want to change the partition allocation. The solution may be to add a file based swap for Linux as…
How to efficiently archive a very large sparse file, say 1TB? The sparse file may contains a small amount of data, say 32MB. SEEK_HOLE and SEEK_DATA The SEEK_HOLE/SEEK_DATA functionalities play the trick and makes `tar` and `cp` handle the large sparse file very efficiently. `lseek` with `SEEK_HOLE` returns the offset of the start of the…
In this post, creating a file-backed virtual block device (VBD) and installing Fedora 20 in the Xen DomU via internet will be introduced. This domain is created on a Fedora 20 Dom0 as introduced in https://www.systutorials.com/installing-xen-on-fedora-20-as-domain-0/. For better performance, you may consider using LVM backed VM. Create file-backed VBD The actual space of VBD will…
This is the latest stable and recommended stable Xen Dom0 solution on Fedora 12. No serious bug found till now and we will fix the bugs by ourselves if some appears. It also works on Fedora 14 as well. It should not be hard to use this solution on other versions of Fedora or other…
Creating file-backed virtual block device (VBD) for Xen virtual machines and installing Fedora 12 in Xen DomU via internet will be introduced. Note that this tutorial is based on a pretty old OS (Fedora 12). But the method here is still valid while some minor details may need to be changed for latest Xen and…
I have done some I/O performance benchmark test of Xen DomU. For easier management, some of our DomU VMs are using file-backed VBDs. Previously, our VMs are using Loopback-mounted file-backed VBDs. But blktap-based support are recommended by Xen community. Before considering changing from loopback based VBD to blktap based VBD, I have done this performance…
In this post, these content are introduced: Create and manage file-backed virtual block device (VBD) for virtual machines on xen. Install Fedora 11 via internet as DomU on top of xen. Manage virtual machines using xm. Create file-backed VBD: The actual space of VBD will be the amount of disk the virtual machine used. And…