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authorRob Herring (Arm) <robh@kernel.org>2026-08-31 14:43:51 -0500
committerDmitry Torokhov <dmitry.torokhov@gmail.com>2026-09-13 18:17:31 -0700
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treef0b5f37b42fc13b9908a31b657c646b024231cdd /Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/zero.rst
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Input: tsc2007 - read "ti,poll-period" as u32grafted
The "ti,poll-period" property is documented as a normal uint32 cell. The driver used a u64 helper, which makes the helper type disagree with the schema even though the stored value is still small. Read "ti,poll-period" with the u32 helper matching the documented DT cell size. Assisted-by: Codex:gpt-5-5 Signed-off-by: Rob Herring (Arm) <robh@kernel.org> Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260831194352.1185860-1-robh@kernel.org Signed-off-by: Dmitry Torokhov <dmitry.torokhov@gmail.com>
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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.