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authorFuad Tabba <fuad.tabba@linux.dev>2026-09-22 19:14:30 +0100
committerWill Deacon <will@kernel.org>2026-09-23 12:34:30 +0000
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treecb91c941eccb15f94cbec4e96aa3a9c8736b5d66 /Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/zero.rst
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arm64/boot: Disable trapping of PMZR_EL0 writes to EL2grafted
__init_el2_fgt2() writes one mask to both HDFGRTR2_EL2 and HDFGWTR2_EL2. PMZR_EL0 is write-only, so its trap bit, nPMZR_EL0, exists only in HDFGWTR2_EL2 and is therefore never set: a PMZR_EL0 write from the host traps to EL2, where the nVHE hypervisor has no handler and BUG()s. The kernel never writes PMZR_EL0, but kernel.perf_user_access=1 has the PMU driver set PMUSERENR_EL0.UEN for a task with a user-read event, so a write from EL0 reaches the trap and takes the host down without a panic message. Accumulate the HDFGWTR2_EL2 bits separately, as __init_el2_fgt() already does for HDFGWTR_EL2, and set nPMZR_EL0 with the other FEAT_PMUv3p9 bits. Fixes: 858c7bfcb35e1 ("arm64/boot: Enable EL2 requirements for FEAT_PMUv3p9") Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org Signed-off-by: Fuad Tabba <fuad.tabba@linux.dev> Reviewed-by: Anshuman Khandual <anshuman.khandual@arm.com> Reviewed-by: Oliver Upton <oupton@kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>
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+=======
+dm-zero
+=======
+
+Device-Mapper's "zero" target provides a block-device that always returns
+zero'd data on reads and silently drops writes. This is similar behavior to
+/dev/zero, but as a block-device instead of a character-device.
+
+Dm-zero has no target-specific parameters.
+
+One very interesting use of dm-zero is for creating "sparse" devices in
+conjunction with dm-snapshot. A sparse device reports a device-size larger
+than the amount of actual storage space available for that device. A user can
+write data anywhere within the sparse device and read it back like a normal
+device. Reads to previously unwritten areas will return a zero'd buffer. When
+enough data has been written to fill up the actual storage space, the sparse
+device is deactivated. This can be very useful for testing device and
+filesystem limitations.
+
+To create a sparse device, start by creating a dm-zero device that's the
+desired size of the sparse device. For this example, we'll assume a 10TB
+sparse device::
+
+ TEN_TERABYTES=`expr 10 \* 1024 \* 1024 \* 1024 \* 2` # 10 TB in sectors
+ echo "0 $TEN_TERABYTES zero" | dmsetup create zero1
+
+Then create a snapshot of the zero device, using any available block-device as
+the COW device. The size of the COW device will determine the amount of real
+space available to the sparse device. For this example, we'll assume /dev/sdb1
+is an available 10GB partition::
+
+ echo "0 $TEN_TERABYTES snapshot /dev/mapper/zero1 /dev/sdb1 p 128" | \
+ dmsetup create sparse1
+
+This will create a 10TB sparse device called /dev/mapper/sparse1 that has
+10GB of actual storage space available. If more than 10GB of data is written
+to this device, it will start returning I/O errors.