DM 5/5: Documentation

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+dm-io
+=====
+
+Dm-io provides synchronous and asynchronous I/O services. There are three
+types of I/O services available, and each type has a sync and an async
+version.
+
+The user must set up an io_region structure to describe the desired location 
+of the I/O. Each io_region indicates a block-device along with the starting
+sector and size of the region.
+
+   struct io_region {
+      struct block_device *bdev;
+      sector_t sector;
+      sector_t count;
+   };
+
+Dm-io can read from one io_region or write to one or more io_regions. Writes
+to multiple regions are specified by an array of io_region structures.
+
+The first I/O service type takes a list of memory pages as the data buffer for
+the I/O, along with an offset into the first page.
+
+   struct page_list {
+      struct page_list *next;
+      struct page *page;
+   };
+
+   int dm_io_sync(unsigned int num_regions, struct io_region *where, int rw,
+                  struct page_list *pl, unsigned int offset,
+                  unsigned long *error_bits);
+   int dm_io_async(unsigned int num_regions, struct io_region *where, int rw,
+                   struct page_list *pl, unsigned int offset,
+                   io_notify_fn fn, void *context);
+
+The second I/O service type takes an array of bio vectors as the data buffer
+for the I/O. This service can be handy if the caller has a pre-assembled bio,
+but wants to direct different portions of the bio to different devices.
+
+   int dm_io_sync_bvec(unsigned int num_regions, struct io_region *where,
+                       int rw, struct bio_vec *bvec,
+                       unsigned long *error_bits);
+   int dm_io_async_bvec(unsigned int num_regions, struct io_region *where,
+                        int rw, struct bio_vec *bvec,
+                        io_notify_fn fn, void *context);
+
+The third I/O service type takes a pointer to a vmalloc'd memory buffer as the
+data buffer for the I/O. This service can be handy if the caller needs to do
+I/O to a large region but doesn't want to allocate a large number of individual
+memory pages.
+
+   int dm_io_sync_vm(unsigned int num_regions, struct io_region *where, int rw,
+                     void *data, unsigned long *error_bits);
+   int dm_io_async_vm(unsigned int num_regions, struct io_region *where, int rw,
+                      void *data, io_notify_fn fn, void *context);
+
+Callers of the asynchronous I/O services must include the name of a completion
+callback routine and a pointer to some context data for the I/O.
+
+   typedef void (*io_notify_fn)(unsigned long error, void *context);
+
+The "error" parameter in this callback, as well as the "*error" parameter in
+all of the synchronous versions, is a bitset (instead of a simple error value).
+In the case of an write-I/O to multiple regions, this bitset allows dm-io to
+indicate success or failure on each individual region.
+
+Before using any of the dm-io services, the user should call dm_io_get()
+and specify the number of pages they expect to perform I/O on concurrently.
+Dm-io will attempt to resize its mempool to make sure enough pages are
+always available in order to avoid unnecessary waiting while performing I/O.
+
+When the user is finished using the dm-io services, they should call
+dm_io_put() and specify the same number of pages that were given on the
+dm_io_get() call.
+

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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.
+