summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/zero.rst
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorDave Airlie <airlied@redhat.com>2026-09-26 07:57:59 +1000
committerDave Airlie <airlied@redhat.com>2026-09-26 07:58:24 +1000
commita9ed3aa9b87ee41e8ab3ff471b1331c154767e45 (patch)
treecc62d74e0eb4905246978674461e78e2f9df2afd /Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/zero.rst
downloadlinux-stable-a9ed3aa9b87ee41e8ab3ff471b1331c154767e45.tar.gz
linux-stable-a9ed3aa9b87ee41e8ab3ff471b1331c154767e45.zip
Merge tag 'drm-misc-fixes-2026-09-24' of https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/misc/kernel into drm-fixesgrafted
A number of fixes: - bridge: - samsung-dsim: fix GPIO lifetime - client: Null pointer dereference fix - imagination: error handling fix, page handling fix - nouveau: fix reference leaks, double-frees, out-of-bounds accesses, use-after-frees, don't reject config without SCDC, a number of workarounds - virtio: fix memory leak, reference leaks, null pointer dereference, add pixel blend mode, cache coherency fix Signed-off-by: Dave Airlie <airlied@redhat.com> From: Maxime Ripard <self@mripard.dev> Link: https://patch.msgid.link/arU22zzqUGDEco1y@houat
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/zero.rst')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/zero.rst37
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.