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authorIngo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>2009-09-07 08:19:51 +0200
committerIngo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>2009-09-07 08:19:51 +0200
commita1922ed661ab2c1637d0b10cde933bd9cd33d965 (patch)
tree0f1777542b385ebefd30b3586d830fd8ed6fda5b /Documentation/device-mapper/dm-log.txt
parent75e33751ca8bbb72dd6f1a74d2810ddc8cbe4bdf (diff)
parentd28daf923ac5e4a0d7cecebae56f3e339189366b (diff)
Merge branch 'tracing/core' into tracing/hw-breakpoints
Conflicts: arch/Kconfig kernel/trace/trace.h Merge reason: resolve the conflicts, plus adopt to the new ring-buffer APIs. Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
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+Device-Mapper Logging
+=====================
+The device-mapper logging code is used by some of the device-mapper
+RAID targets to track regions of the disk that are not consistent.
+A region (or portion of the address space) of the disk may be
+inconsistent because a RAID stripe is currently being operated on or
+a machine died while the region was being altered. In the case of
+mirrors, a region would be considered dirty/inconsistent while you
+are writing to it because the writes need to be replicated for all
+the legs of the mirror and may not reach the legs at the same time.
+Once all writes are complete, the region is considered clean again.
+
+There is a generic logging interface that the device-mapper RAID
+implementations use to perform logging operations (see
+dm_dirty_log_type in include/linux/dm-dirty-log.h). Various different
+logging implementations are available and provide different
+capabilities. The list includes:
+
+Type Files
+==== =====
+disk drivers/md/dm-log.c
+core drivers/md/dm-log.c
+userspace drivers/md/dm-log-userspace* include/linux/dm-log-userspace.h
+
+The "disk" log type
+-------------------
+This log implementation commits the log state to disk. This way, the
+logging state survives reboots/crashes.
+
+The "core" log type
+-------------------
+This log implementation keeps the log state in memory. The log state
+will not survive a reboot or crash, but there may be a small boost in
+performance. This method can also be used if no storage device is
+available for storing log state.
+
+The "userspace" log type
+------------------------
+This log type simply provides a way to export the log API to userspace,
+so log implementations can be done there. This is done by forwarding most
+logging requests to userspace, where a daemon receives and processes the
+request.
+
+The structure used for communication between kernel and userspace are
+located in include/linux/dm-log-userspace.h. Due to the frequency,
+diversity, and 2-way communication nature of the exchanges between
+kernel and userspace, 'connector' is used as the interface for
+communication.
+
+There are currently two userspace log implementations that leverage this
+framework - "clustered_disk" and "clustered_core". These implementations
+provide a cluster-coherent log for shared-storage. Device-mapper mirroring
+can be used in a shared-storage environment when the cluster log implementations
+are employed.