nocache - minimize filesystem caching effects
---------------------------------------------

The `nocache` tool tries to minimize the effect an application has on
the Linux file system cache. This is done by intercepting the `open`
and `close` system calls and calling `posix_fadvise` with the
`POSIX_FADV_DONTNEED` parameter. Because the library remembers which
pages (ie., 4K-blocks of the file) were already in file system cache
when the file was opened, these will not be marked as "don't need",
because other applications might need that, although they are not
actively used (think: hot standby).

Use case: backup processes that should not interfere with the present
state of the cache.


Install and Use
---------------

Just type `make`. Then, prepend `./nocache` to your command:

    ./nocache cp -a ~/ /mnt/backup/home-$(hostname)

You can also put the `nocache.so` file to a location like
`/usr/local/lib` and do `LD_PRELOAD=/usr/local/lib/nocache.so`.
(This is what the `install` target will do.)

Debian unstable packages are available at http://packages.debian.org/sid/nocache.
Please note that `nocache` will only build on a system that has
support for the `posix_fadvise` syscall and exposes it, too. This
should be the case on most modern Unices, but kfreebsd notably has no
support for this as of now.


Testing
-------

For testing purposes, I included two small tools:

* `cachedel` calls `posix_fadvise(fd, 0, 0, POSIX_FADV_DONTNEED)` on
  the file argument. Thus, if the file is not accessed by any other
  application, the pages will be eradicated from the fs cache.
  Specifying -n <number> will repeat the syscall the given number of
  times which can be useful in some circumstances (see below).
* `cachestats` has three modes: In quiet mode (`-q`), the exit status
  is 0 (success) if the file is fully cached. In normal mode,
  the number of cached vs. not-cached pages is printed. In verbose
  mode (`-v`), an actual map is printed out, where each page that is
  present in the cache is marked with `x`.

It looks like this:

    $ cachestats -v ~/somefile.mp3
    pages in cache: 85/114 (74.6%)  [filesize=453.5K, pagesize=4K]
    
    cache map:
         0: |x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|
        32: |x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|
        64: |x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x| | | | | | | | | | | | |
        96: | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |x|

Also, you can use `vmstat 1` to view cache statistics.


Example run
-----------

Without `nocache`, the file will be fully cached when you copy it
somewhere:

    $ ./cachestats ~/file.mp3
    pages in cache: 154/1945 (7.9%)  [filesize=7776.2K, pagesize=4K]
    $ cp ~/file.mp3 /tmp
    $ ./cachestats ~/file.mp3
    pages in cache: 1945/1945 (100.0%)  [filesize=7776.2K, pagesize=4K]

With `nocache`, the original caching state will be preserved.

    $ ./cachestats ~/file.mp3
    pages in cache: 154/1945 (7.9%)  [filesize=7776.2K, pagesize=4K]
    $ ./nocache cp ~/file.mp3 /tmp
    $ ./cachestats ~/file.mp3
    pages in cache: 154/1945 (7.9%)  [filesize=7776.2K, pagesize=4K]


Limitations
-----------

The pre-loaded library tries really hard to catch all system calls
that open or close a file. This happens by "hijacking" the libc
functions that wrap the actual system calls. In some cases, this may
fail, for example because the application does some clever wrapping.
(That is the reason why `__openat_2` is defined: GNU `tar` uses this
instead of a regular `openat`.)

However, since the actual `fadvise` calls are performed right before
the file descriptor is closed, this may not happen if they are left
open when the application exits, although the destructor tries to do
that.

There are timing issues to consider, as well. If you consider `nocache
cat <file>`, in most (all?) cases the cache will not be restored. For
discussion and possible solutions see <http://lwn.net/Articles/480930/>.
My experience showed that in many cases you could "fix" this by doing
the `posix_fadvise` call *twice*. For both tools `nocache` and
`cachedel` you can specify the number using `-n`, like so:

    $ nocache -n 2 cat ~/file.mp3

This actually only sets the environment variable `NOCACHE_NR_FADVISE`
to the specified value, and the shared library reads out this value.
If test number 3 in `t/basic.t` fails, then try increasing this number
until it works, e.g.:

    $ env NOCACHE_NR_FADVISE=2 make test

Acknowledgements
----------------

Most of the application logic is from Tobias Oetiker's patch for
`rsync` <http://insights.oetiker.ch/linux/fadvise.html>. Note however,
that `rsync` uses sockets, so if you try a `nocache rsync`, only
the local process will be intercepted.
