aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/qemu-options.hx
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'qemu-options.hx')
-rw-r--r--qemu-options.hx8
1 files changed, 6 insertions, 2 deletions
diff --git a/qemu-options.hx b/qemu-options.hx
index d86815dc04..35d95d1d89 100644
--- a/qemu-options.hx
+++ b/qemu-options.hx
@@ -133,7 +133,7 @@ ETEXI
DEF("drive", HAS_ARG, QEMU_OPTION_drive,
"-drive [file=file][,if=type][,bus=n][,unit=m][,media=d][,index=i]\n"
" [,cyls=c,heads=h,secs=s[,trans=t]][,snapshot=on|off]\n"
- " [,cache=writethrough|writeback|none|unsafe][,format=f]\n"
+ " [,cache=writethrough|writeback|none|directsync|unsafe][,format=f]\n"
" [,serial=s][,addr=A][,id=name][,aio=threads|native]\n"
" [,readonly=on|off]\n"
" use 'file' as a drive image\n", QEMU_ARCH_ALL)
@@ -164,7 +164,7 @@ These options have the same definition as they have in @option{-hdachs}.
@item snapshot=@var{snapshot}
@var{snapshot} is "on" or "off" and allows to enable snapshot for given drive (see @option{-snapshot}).
@item cache=@var{cache}
-@var{cache} is "none", "writeback", "unsafe", or "writethrough" and controls how the host cache is used to access block data.
+@var{cache} is "none", "writeback", "unsafe", "directsync" or "writethrough" and controls how the host cache is used to access block data.
@item aio=@var{aio}
@var{aio} is "threads", or "native" and selects between pthread based disk I/O and native Linux AIO.
@item format=@var{format}
@@ -199,6 +199,10 @@ The host page cache can be avoided entirely with @option{cache=none}. This will
attempt to do disk IO directly to the guests memory. QEMU may still perform
an internal copy of the data.
+The host page cache can be avoided while only sending write notifications to
+the guest when the data has been reported as written by the storage subsystem
+using @option{cache=directsync}.
+
Some block drivers perform badly with @option{cache=writethrough}, most notably,
qcow2. If performance is more important than correctness,
@option{cache=writeback} should be used with qcow2.