diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/device-mapper')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/device-mapper/cache.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/device-mapper/thin-provisioning.txt | 29 |
2 files changed, 34 insertions, 6 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/device-mapper/cache.txt b/Documentation/device-mapper/cache.txt index e6b72d355151..68c0f517c60e 100644 --- a/Documentation/device-mapper/cache.txt +++ b/Documentation/device-mapper/cache.txt @@ -124,12 +124,11 @@ the default being 204800 sectors (or 100MB). Updating on-disk metadata ------------------------- -On-disk metadata is committed every time a REQ_SYNC or REQ_FUA bio is -written. If no such requests are made then commits will occur every -second. This means the cache behaves like a physical disk that has a -write cache (the same is true of the thin-provisioning target). If -power is lost you may lose some recent writes. The metadata should -always be consistent in spite of any crash. +On-disk metadata is committed every time a FLUSH or FUA bio is written. +If no such requests are made then commits will occur every second. This +means the cache behaves like a physical disk that has a volatile write +cache. If power is lost you may lose some recent writes. The metadata +should always be consistent in spite of any crash. The 'dirty' state for a cache block changes far too frequently for us to keep updating it on the fly. So we treat it as a hint. In normal diff --git a/Documentation/device-mapper/thin-provisioning.txt b/Documentation/device-mapper/thin-provisioning.txt index 8a7a3d46e0da..3b34b4fbb54f 100644 --- a/Documentation/device-mapper/thin-provisioning.txt +++ b/Documentation/device-mapper/thin-provisioning.txt @@ -116,6 +116,35 @@ Resuming a device with a new table itself triggers an event so the userspace daemon can use this to detect a situation where a new table already exceeds the threshold. +A low water mark for the metadata device is maintained in the kernel and +will trigger a dm event if free space on the metadata device drops below +it. + +Updating on-disk metadata +------------------------- + +On-disk metadata is committed every time a FLUSH or FUA bio is written. +If no such requests are made then commits will occur every second. This +means the thin-provisioning target behaves like a physical disk that has +a volatile write cache. If power is lost you may lose some recent +writes. The metadata should always be consistent in spite of any crash. + +If data space is exhausted the pool will either error or queue IO +according to the configuration (see: error_if_no_space). If metadata +space is exhausted or a metadata operation fails: the pool will error IO +until the pool is taken offline and repair is performed to 1) fix any +potential inconsistencies and 2) clear the flag that imposes repair. +Once the pool's metadata device is repaired it may be resized, which +will allow the pool to return to normal operation. Note that if a pool +is flagged as needing repair, the pool's data and metadata devices +cannot be resized until repair is performed. It should also be noted +that when the pool's metadata space is exhausted the current metadata +transaction is aborted. Given that the pool will cache IO whose +completion may have already been acknowledged to upper IO layers +(e.g. filesystem) it is strongly suggested that consistency checks +(e.g. fsck) be performed on those layers when repair of the pool is +required. + Thin provisioning ----------------- |