aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/Documentation
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorLinus Torvalds2015-09-02 16:35:26 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds2015-09-02 16:35:26 -0700
commit1e1a4e8f439113b7820bc7150569f685e1cc2b43 (patch)
tree25a201240e619f7d766638fee57d8cfc55ec0bb9 /Documentation
parentd975f309a8b250e67b66eabeb56be6989c783629 (diff)
parentcc7da0ba9c96699592d0a69d7d146ac6adcc18e7 (diff)
Merge tag 'dm-4.3-changes' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/device-mapper/linux-dm
Pull device mapper update from Mike Snitzer: - a couple small cleanups in dm-cache, dm-verity, persistent-data's dm-btree, and DM core. - a 4.1-stable fix for dm-cache that fixes the leaking of deferred bio prison cells - a 4.2-stable fix that adds feature reporting for the dm-stats features added in 4.2 - improve DM-snapshot to not invalidate the on-disk snapshot if snapshot device write overflow occurs; but a write overflow triggered through the origin device will still invalidate the snapshot. - optimize DM-thinp's async discard submission a bit now that late bio splitting has been included in block core. - switch DM-cache's SMQ policy lock from using a mutex to a spinlock; improves performance on very low latency devices (eg. NVMe SSD). - document DM RAID 4/5/6's discard support [ I did not pull the slab changes, which weren't appropriate for this tree, and weren't obviously the right thing to do anyway. At the very least they need some discussion and explanation before getting merged. Because not pulling the actual tagged commit but doing a partial pull instead, this merge commit thus also obviously is missing the git signature from the original tag ] * tag 'dm-4.3-changes' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/device-mapper/linux-dm: dm cache: fix use after freeing migrations dm cache: small cleanups related to deferred prison cell cleanup dm cache: fix leaking of deferred bio prison cells dm raid: document RAID 4/5/6 discard support dm stats: report precise_timestamps and histogram in @stats_list output dm thin: optimize async discard submission dm snapshot: don't invalidate on-disk image on snapshot write overflow dm: remove unlikely() before IS_ERR() dm: do not override error code returned from dm_get_device() dm: test return value for DM_MAPIO_SUBMITTED dm verity: remove unused mempool dm cache: move wake_waker() from free_migrations() to where it is needed dm btree remove: remove unused function get_nr_entries() dm btree: remove unused "dm_block_t root" parameter in btree_split_sibling() dm cache policy smq: change the mutex to a spinlock
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/device-mapper/dm-raid.txt31
-rw-r--r--Documentation/device-mapper/statistics.txt4
2 files changed, 35 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/device-mapper/dm-raid.txt b/Documentation/device-mapper/dm-raid.txt
index cb12af3b51c2..df2d636b6088 100644
--- a/Documentation/device-mapper/dm-raid.txt
+++ b/Documentation/device-mapper/dm-raid.txt
@@ -209,6 +209,37 @@ include:
"repair" - Initiate a repair of the array.
"reshape"- Currently unsupported (-EINVAL).
+
+Discard Support
+---------------
+The implementation of discard support among hardware vendors varies.
+When a block is discarded, some storage devices will return zeroes when
+the block is read. These devices set the 'discard_zeroes_data'
+attribute. Other devices will return random data. Confusingly, some
+devices that advertise 'discard_zeroes_data' will not reliably return
+zeroes when discarded blocks are read! Since RAID 4/5/6 uses blocks
+from a number of devices to calculate parity blocks and (for performance
+reasons) relies on 'discard_zeroes_data' being reliable, it is important
+that the devices be consistent. Blocks may be discarded in the middle
+of a RAID 4/5/6 stripe and if subsequent read results are not
+consistent, the parity blocks may be calculated differently at any time;
+making the parity blocks useless for redundancy. It is important to
+understand how your hardware behaves with discards if you are going to
+enable discards with RAID 4/5/6.
+
+Since the behavior of storage devices is unreliable in this respect,
+even when reporting 'discard_zeroes_data', by default RAID 4/5/6
+discard support is disabled -- this ensures data integrity at the
+expense of losing some performance.
+
+Storage devices that properly support 'discard_zeroes_data' are
+increasingly whitelisted in the kernel and can thus be trusted.
+
+For trusted devices, the following dm-raid module parameter can be set
+to safely enable discard support for RAID 4/5/6:
+ 'devices_handle_discards_safely'
+
+
Version History
---------------
1.0.0 Initial version. Support for RAID 4/5/6
diff --git a/Documentation/device-mapper/statistics.txt b/Documentation/device-mapper/statistics.txt
index 4919b2dfd1b3..6f5ef944ca4c 100644
--- a/Documentation/device-mapper/statistics.txt
+++ b/Documentation/device-mapper/statistics.txt
@@ -121,6 +121,10 @@ Messages
Output format:
<region_id>: <start_sector>+<length> <step> <program_id> <aux_data>
+ precise_timestamps histogram:n1,n2,n3,...
+
+ The strings "precise_timestamps" and "histogram" are printed only
+ if they were specified when creating the region.
@stats_print <region_id> [<starting_line> <number_of_lines>]