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| author | Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org> | 2026-08-14 15:43:51 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org> | 2026-08-14 15:43:51 -0700 |
| commit | 9cc63f8bcd560c760d0b12e15bba8f81c86237cf (patch) | |
| tree | 3b5269b1bcf6714171754946367c51e0590f64da /Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/zero.rst | |
| download | linux-stable-9cc63f8bcd560c760d0b12e15bba8f81c86237cf.tar.gz linux-stable-9cc63f8bcd560c760d0b12e15bba8f81c86237cf.zip | |
Merge branches 'expcb.2026.07.24a', 'misc.2026.07.30a', 'rcu-tasks.2026.07.30a', 'srcu.2026.08.11a' and 'torture.2026.08.14a' into HEADgrafted
Changes:
Make expedited grace periods expedite normal RCU callbacks
Miscellaneous fixes:
* Improve diagnostic output with character task states.
* Mark accesses to inform KCSAN of concurrency design.
* Move from kmalloc() to kmalloc_obj().
* Documentation updates.
* Improve handling of RCU deferred quiescent states.
* Clean up unused function arguments and structure fields.
* Reduce show_rcu_gp_kthreads() stack space.
Tasks RCU updates:
* Clean up after SRCU re-implementation of Tasks Trace RCU.
* Mark accesses to inform KCSAN of concurrency design.
* Add ->lazy_timer status to diagnostic output.
* Remove an unnecessary memory barrier.
* Fix a data race, courtesy of KCSAN.
* Documentation updates.
* Convert cond_resched_tasks_rcu_qs() from macro to static inline
function.
SRCU updates:
* Add Rust helpers for SRCU.
* Avoid losing queued work at cleanup_srcu_struct() time.
Torture-test updates:
* Preparation work for immediate RCU priority deboosting.
* Test RCU readers from real interrupt handlers (as opposed to softirq).
* Simplify code through use of cpumask_next_wrap().
* Improve diagnostic output with character task states.
* Add rcutorture.nwriters parameter to allow lightweight stall testing,
and rcutorture.stall_only to make doing so easier.
* Test an RCU Tasks Trace grace period implying an RCU grace period.
* Make RCU Tasks Trace torturing track reader batches.
* Fix a data race, courtesy of KCSAN.
* Plug a shuffle_tmp_mask memory leak on kthread spawn failure.
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/zero.rst')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/zero.rst | 37 |
1 files changed, 37 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/zero.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/zero.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000..11fb5cf45 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/zero.rst @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +======= +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. |
