Both qemu and qemu-img use writeback cache mode by default, which is
already documented in qemu(1). qemu-nbd uses writethrough cache mode by
default, and the default cache mode is not documented.

According to the qemu-nbd(8):

   --cache=CACHE
          The  cache  mode  to be used with the file.  See the
          documentation of the emulator's -drive cache=... option for
          allowed values.

qemu(1) says:

    The default mode is cache=writeback.

So users have no reason to assume that qemu-nbd is using writethough
cache mode. The only hint is the painfully slow writing when using the
defaults.

Looking in git history, it seems that qemu used writethrough in the past
to support broken guests that did not flush data properly, or could not
flush due to limitations in qemu. But qemu-nbd clients can use
NBD_CMD_FLUSH to flush data, so using writethrough does not help anyone.

Change the default cache mode to writback, and document the default and
available values properly in the online help and manual.

With this change converting image via qemu-nbd is 3.5 times faster.

    $ qemu-img create dst.img 50g
    $ qemu-nbd -t -f raw -k /tmp/nbd.sock dst.img

Before this change:

    $ hyperfine -r3 "./qemu-img convert -p -f raw -O raw -T none -W fedora34.img nbd+unix:///?socket=/tmp/nbd.sock"
    Benchmark #1: ./qemu-img convert -p -f raw -O raw -T none -W fedora34.img nbd+unix:///?socket=/tmp/nbd.sock
      Time (mean ± σ):     83.639 s ±  5.970 s    [User: 2.733 s, System: 6.112 s]
      Range (min … max):   76.749 s … 87.245 s    3 runs

After this change:

    $ hyperfine -r3 "./qemu-img convert -p -f raw -O raw -T none -W fedora34.img nbd+unix:///?socket=/tmp/nbd.sock"
    Benchmark #1: ./qemu-img convert -p -f raw -O raw -T none -W fedora34.img nbd+unix:///?socket=/tmp/nbd.sock
      Time (mean ± σ):     23.522 s ±  0.433 s    [User: 2.083 s, System: 5.475 s]
      Range (min … max):   23.234 s … 24.019 s    3 runs

Users can avoid the issue by using --cache=writeback[1] but the defaults
should give good performance for the common use case.

[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1990656



Signed-off-by: Nir Soffer <nsoffer@redhat.com>
Message-Id: <20210813205519.50518-1-nsoffer@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
CC: qemu-stable@nongnu.org
Signed-off-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>