Mdthbs

I was trying out bcache but i don't have an SSD so wanted to use free memory as a substitute. As ramdisk is listed in /proc/devices as block device i assumed this would work OK but with below simple test i can't get it working.

This is on Ubuntu 15.10 with latest 4.5 kernel installed and i'm using the default /dev/ram devices as my SSD substitute.

losetup -f

dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/bcache_origin bs=1M count=200

losetup /dev/loop2 /tmp/bcache_origin 



make-bcache -B /dev/loop2 -C /dev/ram9 

No error or output was given from make-bcache. At this point i expect for the new bcache device to be listed in below paths either by UUID or name but there is nothing.

ls -al /sys/fs/bcache/

ls -al /sys/block/bcache*

Here is outputs from cache-super-show

for cache

bcache-super-show /dev/ram9



sb.magic                ok

sb.first_sector         8 [match]

sb.csum                 53EDD9C169F73E1B [match]

sb.version              0 [cache device]



dev.label               (empty)

dev.uuid                2189aa3b-67e7-4296-bb25-6b5ba886befa

dev.sectors_per_block   1

dev.sectors_per_bucket  1024

dev.cache.first_sector  1024

dev.cache.cache_sectors 130048

dev.cache.total_sectors 131072

dev.cache.ordered       no

dev.cache.discard       no

dev.cache.pos           0

dev.cache.replacement   0 [lru]



cset.uuid               0a6b3824-72c1-489e-9d96-d976cb49e8a9

and origin

bcache-super-show /dev/loop2



sb.magic                ok

sb.first_sector         8 [match]

sb.csum                 ECBC84E42E6F52B9 [match]

sb.version              1 [backing device]



dev.label               (empty)

dev.uuid                aff690a4-7ee1-4b62-85cc-ad41c775d7d8

dev.sectors_per_block   1

dev.sectors_per_bucket  1024

dev.data.first_sector   16

dev.data.cache_mode     0 [writethrough]

dev.data.cache_state    0 [detached]



cset.uuid               0a6b3824-72c1-489e-9d96-d976cb49e8a9

I also tried using loop devices for both but that failed even worse. Running below command results in nasty kernel BUG dump in dmesg.

losetup -f

dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/bcache_data bs=1M count=200

dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/bcache_cache bs=1M count=200



losetup /dev/loop5 /tmp/bcache_data

losetup /dev/loop6 /tmp/bcache_cache

make-bcache -B /dev/loop5 -C /dev/loop6

ll /sys/fs/bcache/

Has anyone successfully got a ramdisk to work as caching device with bcache ? Without any sort of stdout/err to indicate where it's failing i'm not sure if this is my miss-configuration or a bug.

Thanks
fLo

some devices need to be registered in order to be used

after making the cache devices with

# make-bcache -B /dev/loop2 -C /dev/ram9 

you need to register both (at least the ramdisk though, loop devices and harddisks seem to autoregister most of the time) with

# echo /dev/ram9 >/sys/fs/bcache/register

the uuid enry in /sys/fs/bcache should then show up and the device should be automatically attached as visible in

# cat /sys/block/bcache0/bcache/state 

clean

if you make-bcache the cache and backing device separately with

# make-bcache -B /dev/loop2

# make-bcache -C /dev/ram9

this is not the case and even after you register the ram disk, it will say

# cat /sys/block/bcache0/bcache/state 

no-cache

although the entry in /sys/fs/bcache will show up:

# ls /sys/fs/bcache

f876ea9b-af2c-4b01-84ba-43a87d60501c  register  register_quiet

you then need to attach it with

# echo f876ea9b-af2c-4b01-84ba-43a87d60501c >/sys/block/bcache0/bcache/attach

# cat /sys/block/bcache0/bcache/state 

clean

tricky pitfall: once attached to a bcache, you cannot remove the loop device with

# losetup -d /dev/loop2

this will fail silently, even though the exit code is 0 (success!)

you need to first undo everything with

# echo 1 >/sys/block/bcache0/bcache/stop

# echo 1 >/sys/fs/bcache/f876ea9b-af2c-4b01-84ba-43a87d60501c/unregister