A put cost 60-131 ms on the box while a read cost 1-2 ms, and the reason was one call:
every write path reached `append` through `device_and_layout()` → `read_image()`, which
reads the WHOLE DEVICE — 100,663,296 bytes here — into a KVVec, to append ~70 bytes.
`append` itself never looks at the image: it reads the log region and the control
block. The read paths had been taught to read only where the image lies; the write
paths never were.
`AppendSource` now names what an append reads: `whole_image` (kept for the two callers
that genuinely need it — a bare store, whose log runs to the end of the file, and the
v1→v4 migration, which folds) or `log_head` (a device's control block plus the log's
first `WAL_HEADER_LEN` bytes). `write_view()` reads exactly that, `append_mutation()`
is the single entry point all four writers use — put, del, the boot record, and the
misc device's write_iter — and the bare-image fallback is decided in one place instead
of four. The fold still reads the whole store, because a fold rewrites it; that is the
honest tail, and it is why a fold belongs on a timer rather than on the path a caller
waits behind.
The log is bounded by `LOG_FOLD_BYTES`, because it is on the READ path: `Addressed::open`
reads `WAL_HEADER_LEN + log_used` bytes on every call, so an unfolded log is a tax on
every read, not a bill paid once at the fold. The live store's control block reports
log capacity 50,335,744 bytes — if it ever filled, every coordinate read would read
~48 MB before answering anything. A write that finds the log over the line folds first,
through `fold_for_headroom`, and then appends to a fresh log; guarded so one append
folds at most once, because a fold that did not shrink the log must not loop. The trade
is named in the code: the write that crosses the line pays a bounded, rare fold instead
of every reader paying an ever-larger log. The timer's comment — "the log grows at
roughly a megabyte a day against a 50 MB region, and a fold rewrites the whole image, so
folding more often would buy nothing and cost I/O" — is a data workload's arithmetic,
where the log is a recovery artefact and nobody reads it.
`space_entry`, `find` and `lower_bound` each allocated a fresh KVVec inside their
binary-search loop; one buffer per search now.
The boot record's one attempt becomes a bounded retry: `ensure_boot_record` claimed the
boot with a swap BEFORE it tried, so a single transient failure cost the boot its record
silently — which is exactly what happened on the box, where the first client of the boot
could not open the store for writing. It now claims one of `BOOT_RECORD_MAX_ATTEMPTS`
with a compare-exchange, and parks the count at the ceiling on success.
Release moves to 6.19.3-cubelinux0.7: verify-box-preflight.sh now refuses a same-release
reinstall, because the default entry boots the release being replaced.
Gates, on #81:
verify-enum-cost PASS a write is 1.45 ms mean / 7.46 ms worst (new ceilings: 50 ms
write, 5 ms read), and a write does not grow with the store
verify-file-store PASS 12 writes to a store that is a FILE, all accounted for
verify-syscall PASS the store the kernel writes is byte-identical to userspace's
surface-camera-build
e968b3964e