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author | Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org> | 2024-04-27 10:05:51 +0000 |
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committer | Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org> | 2024-04-27 10:05:51 +0000 |
commit | 5d1646d90e1f2cceb9f0828f4b28318cd0ec7744 (patch) | |
tree | a94efe259b9009378be6d90eb30d2b019d95c194 /Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/zero.rst | |
parent | Initial commit. (diff) | |
download | linux-upstream/5.10.209.tar.xz linux-upstream/5.10.209.zip |
Adding upstream version 5.10.209.upstream/5.10.209upstream
Signed-off-by: Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>
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. |