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authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2019-07-16 12:21:41 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2019-07-16 12:21:41 -0700
commitc309b6f24222246c18a8b65d3950e6e755440865 (patch)
tree11893170f5c246bb0dee8066e85878af04162ab0 /Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/zero.rst
parent3e859477a1db52a0435d06a55fdb54f62d69c292 (diff)
parent168869492e7009b6861b615f1d030c99bc805e83 (diff)
Merge tag 'docs/v5.3-1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mchehab/linux-media
Pull rst conversion of docs from Mauro Carvalho Chehab: "As agreed with Jon, I'm sending this big series directly to you, c/c him, as this series required a special care, in order to avoid conflicts with other trees" * tag 'docs/v5.3-1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mchehab/linux-media: (77 commits) docs: kbuild: fix build with pdf and fix some minor issues docs: block: fix pdf output docs: arm: fix a breakage with pdf output docs: don't use nested tables docs: gpio: add sysfs interface to the admin-guide docs: locking: add it to the main index docs: add some directories to the main documentation index docs: add SPDX tags to new index files docs: add a memory-devices subdir to driver-api docs: phy: place documentation under driver-api docs: serial: move it to the driver-api docs: driver-api: add remaining converted dirs to it docs: driver-api: add xilinx driver API documentation docs: driver-api: add a series of orphaned documents docs: admin-guide: add a series of orphaned documents docs: cgroup-v1: add it to the admin-guide book docs: aoe: add it to the driver-api book docs: add some documentation dirs to the driver-api book docs: driver-model: move it to the driver-api book docs: lp855x-driver.rst: add it to the driver-api book ...
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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.