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Bug 1152037 - RFE: use virtio-scsi disk bus with discard='unmap' for guests that support it
Summary: RFE: use virtio-scsi disk bus with discard='unmap' for guests that support it
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED ERRATA
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
Classification: Red Hat
Component: gnome-boxes
Version: 8.3
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Unspecified
unspecified
medium
Target Milestone: rc
: 8.3
Assignee: Felipe Borges
QA Contact: Radek Duda
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2014-10-13 11:39 UTC by David Jaša
Modified: 2021-05-18 14:38 UTC (History)
6 users (show)

Fixed In Version: gnome-boxes-3.36.5-8.el8
Doc Type: Enhancement
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2021-05-18 14:38:08 UTC
Type: Feature Request
Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
feborges: needinfo-

Attachments (Terms of Use)


Links
System ID Private Priority Status Summary Last Updated
GNOME Bugzilla 738444 0 Normal RESOLVED Use virtio-scsi rather than virtio-blk 2021-01-22 09:09:47 UTC

Description David Jaša 2014-10-13 11:39:46 UTC 
Description of problem:
gnome-boxes by default uses virtio-blk disks backed by qcow2 files stored in home directories. It would be nice to use virtio-scsi disks by default with "<driver ... discard='unmap'/>" option tuned on for guests that support virtio-scsi (IIRC RHEL >= 6.4, RHEL 7, Windows >= 7 with virtio drivers). That way, valuable space in user's home can be conserved:

## backing file usage on host
$ du -sm .local/share/gnome-boxes/images/rhel7.0 
8820	.local/share/gnome-boxes/images/rhel7.0
## run fstrim in the guest:
[root@rhel7 ~]# fstrim -v /
/: 2.4 GiB (2528993280 bytes) trimmed
## backing file usage after guest's fstrim
[djasa@cihla ~]$ du -sm .local/share/gnome-boxes/images/rhel7.0 
6768	.local/share/gnome-boxes/images/rhel7.0

Note that Windows 7 by default issue discards without user intervention, in RHEL (and IIRC Fedora as well), you either have to set up a cron job for fstrim or add "discards" to mount options


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
gnome-boxes-3.8.3-9.el7.x86_64

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. install a guest that supports virtio-scsi
2. inspect domain xml for the VM
3.

Actual results:
virtio-blk is used

Expected results:
virtio-scsi with discard='unmap' is configured

Additional info:
Comment 1 Vladimir Benes 2015-05-06 11:45:06 UTC 
still unfixed in 3.14, would it be possible to implement it or do we need to file it upstream first?
Comment 3 Zeeshan Ali 2020-04-14 09:53:57 UTC 
I don't know and I'm not responsible any more (I hope) for Boxes so moving over to Felipe. :)
Comment 6 Felipe Borges 2020-11-02 14:57:16 UTC 
Ever since QEMU 4.0, virtio-blk disks have gained discard support[0]. For this reason, we don't need to migrate to virtio-scsi to benefit from discard support.

I proposed changes to make Boxes pass discard=unmap for virtio-blk disks drivers. This should suffice to fix this bugzilla.

You can verify that this works by checking the presence of "<driver ... discard='unmap'/>" in the disk driver node.

[0] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1672680
Comment 11 errata-xmlrpc 2021-05-18 14:38:08 UTC 
Since the problem described in this bug report should be
resolved in a recent advisory, it has been closed with a
resolution of ERRATA.

For information on the advisory (Moderate: GNOME security, bug fix, and enhancement update), and where to find the updated
files, follow the link below.

If the solution does not work for you, open a new bug report.

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2021:1586
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