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authorJosé Pekkarinen <jose.pekkarinen@nokia.com>2016-04-11 10:41:07 +0300
committerJosé Pekkarinen <jose.pekkarinen@nokia.com>2016-04-13 08:17:18 +0300
commite09b41010ba33a20a87472ee821fa407a5b8da36 (patch)
treed10dc367189862e7ca5c592f033dc3726e1df4e3 /kernel/Documentation/device-mapper/dm-raid.txt
parentf93b97fd65072de626c074dbe099a1fff05ce060 (diff)
These changes are the raw update to linux-4.4.6-rt14. Kernel sources
are taken from kernel.org, and rt patch from the rt wiki download page. During the rebasing, the following patch collided: Force tick interrupt and get rid of softirq magic(I70131fb85). Collisions have been removed because its logic was found on the source already. Change-Id: I7f57a4081d9deaa0d9ccfc41a6c8daccdee3b769 Signed-off-by: José Pekkarinen <jose.pekkarinen@nokia.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'kernel/Documentation/device-mapper/dm-raid.txt')
-rw-r--r--kernel/Documentation/device-mapper/dm-raid.txt33
1 files changed, 33 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/kernel/Documentation/device-mapper/dm-raid.txt b/kernel/Documentation/device-mapper/dm-raid.txt
index ef8ba9fa5..df2d636b6 100644
--- a/kernel/Documentation/device-mapper/dm-raid.txt
+++ b/kernel/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
@@ -224,3 +255,5 @@ Version History
New status (STATUSTYPE_INFO) fields: sync_action and mismatch_cnt.
1.5.1 Add ability to restore transiently failed devices on resume.
1.5.2 'mismatch_cnt' is zero unless [last_]sync_action is "check".
+1.6.0 Add discard support (and devices_handle_discard_safely module param).
+1.7.0 Add support for MD RAID0 mappings.