This patch implements two new messages that can be sent to the thin
pool target allowing it to take a snapshot of the _metadata_. This,
read-only snapshot can be accessed by userland, concurrently with the
live target.
Only one metadata snapshot can be held at a time. The pool's status
line will give the block location for the current msnap.
Since version 0.1.5 of the userland thin provisioning tools, the
thin_dump program displays the msnap as follows:
thin_dump -m <msnap root> <metadata dev>
Available here: https://github.com/jthornber/thin-provisioning-tools
Now that userland can access the metadata we can do various things
that have traditionally been kernel side tasks:
i) Incremental backups.
By using metadata snapshots we can work out what blocks have
changed over time. Combined with data snapshots we can ensure
the data doesn't change while we back it up.
A short proof of concept script can be found here:
https://github.com/jthornber/thinp-test-suite/blob/master/incremental_backup_example.rb
ii) Migration of thin devices from one pool to another.
iii) Merging snapshots back into an external origin.
iv) Asyncronous replication.
Signed-off-by: Joe Thornber <ejt@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Alasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com>
Save space by removing entries from the space map ref_count tree if
they're no longer needed.
Ref counts are stored in two places: a bitmap if the ref_count is
below 3, or a btree of uint32_t if 3 or above.
When a ref_count that was above 3 drops below we can remove it from
the tree and save some metadata space. This removal was commented out
before because I was unsure why this was causing under-populated btree
nodes. Earlier patches have fixed this issue.
Signed-off-by: Joe Thornber <ejt@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Alasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com>
Now that the value_size is held within every node of the btrees we can
remove this argument from value_ptr().
For the last few months a BUG_ON has been checking this argument is
the same as that held in the node. No issues were reported. So this
is a safe change.
Signed-off-by: Joe Thornber <ejt@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Alasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com>
When we remove an entry from a node we sometimes rebalance with it's
two neighbours. This wasn't being done correctly; in some cases
entries have to move all the way from the right neighbour to the left
neighbour, or vice versa. This patch pretty much re-writes the
balancing code to fix it.
This code is barely used currently; only when you delete a thin
device, and then only if you have hundreds of them in the same pool.
Once we have discard support, which removes mappings, this will be used
much more heavily.
Signed-off-by: Joe Thornber <ejt@redhat.com>
Cc: stable@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Alasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com>
For the files which are not themselves modular, we can change
them to include only the smaller export.h since all they are
doing is looking for EXPORT_SYMBOL.
Reported-by: Stephen Rothwell <sfr@canb.auug.org.au>
Signed-off-by: Paul Gortmaker <paul.gortmaker@windriver.com>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
The persistent-data library offers a re-usable framework for the storage
and management of on-disk metadata in device-mapper targets.
It's used by the thin-provisioning target in the next patch and in an
upcoming hierarchical storage target.
For further information, please read
Documentation/device-mapper/persistent-data.txt
Signed-off-by: Joe Thornber <thornber@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Alasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com>
Joe Thornber
Stephen Rothwell
Paul Gortmaker
Joe Thornber