dm-log-writes ============= This target takes 2 devices, one to pass all IO to normally, and one to log all of the write operations to. This is intended for file system developers wishing to verify the integrity of metadata or data as the file system is written to. There is a log_write_entry written for every WRITE request and the target is able to take arbitrary data from userspace to insert into the log. The data that is in the WRITE requests is copied into the log to make the replay happen exactly as it happened originally. Log Ordering ============ We log things in order of completion once we are sure the write is no longer in cache. This means that normal WRITE requests are not actually logged until the next REQ_PREFLUSH request. This is to make it easier for userspace to replay the log in a way that correlates to what is on disk and not what is in cache, to make it easier to detect improper waiting/flushing. This works by attaching all WRITE requests to a list once the write completes. Once we see a REQ_PREFLUSH request we splice this list onto the request and once the FLUSH request completes we log all of the WRITEs and then the FLUSH. Only completed WRITEs, at the time the REQ_PREFLUSH is issued, are added in order to simulate the worst case scenario with regard to power failures. Consider the following example (W means write, C means complete): W1,W2,W3,C3,C2,Wflush,C1,Cflush The log would show the following W3,W2,flush,W1.... Again this is to simulate what is actually on disk, this allows us to detect cases where a power failure at a particular point in time would create an inconsistent file system. Any REQ_FUA requests bypass this flushing mechanism and are logged as soon as they complete as those requests will obviously bypass the device cache. Any REQ_DISCARD requests are treated like WRITE requests. Otherwise we would have all the DISCARD requests, and then the WRITE requests and then the FLUSH request. Consider the following example: WRITE block 1, DISCARD block 1, FLUSH If we logged DISCARD when it completed, the replay would look like this DISCARD 1, WRITE 1, FLUSH which isn't quite what happened and wouldn't be caught during the log replay. Target interface ================ i) Constructor log-writes dev_path : Device that all of the IO will go to normally. log_dev_path : Device where the log entries are written to. ii) Status <#logged entries> #logged entries : Number of logged entries highest allocated sector : Highest allocated sector iii) Messages mark You can use a dmsetup message to set an arbitrary mark in a log. For example say you want to fsck a file system after every write, but first you need to replay up to the mkfs to make sure we're fsck'ing something reasonable, you would do something like this: mkfs.btrfs -f /dev/mapper/log dmsetup message log 0 mark mkfs This would allow you to replay the log up to the mkfs mark and then replay from that point on doing the fsck check in the interval that you want. Every log has a mark at the end labeled "dm-log-writes-end". Userspace component =================== There is a userspace tool that will replay the log for you in various ways. It can be found here: https://github.com/josefbacik/log-writes Example usage ============= Say you want to test fsync on your file system. You would do something like this: TABLE="0 $(blockdev --getsz /dev/sdb) log-writes /dev/sdb /dev/sdc" dmsetup create log --table "$TABLE" mkfs.btrfs -f /dev/mapper/log dmsetup message log 0 mark mkfs mount /dev/mapper/log /mnt/btrfs-test dmsetup message log 0 mark fsync md5sum /mnt/btrfs-test/foo umount /mnt/btrfs-test dmsetup remove log replay-log --log /dev/sdc --replay /dev/sdb --end-mark fsync mount /dev/sdb /mnt/btrfs-test md5sum /mnt/btrfs-test/foo Another option is to do a complicated file system operation and verify the file system is consistent during the entire operation. You could do this with: TABLE="0 $(blockdev --getsz /dev/sdb) log-writes /dev/sdb /dev/sdc" dmsetup create log --table "$TABLE" mkfs.btrfs -f /dev/mapper/log dmsetup message log 0 mark mkfs mount /dev/mapper/log /mnt/btrfs-test btrfs filesystem balance /mnt/btrfs-test umount /mnt/btrfs-test dmsetup remove log replay-log --log /dev/sdc --replay /dev/sdb --end-mark mkfs btrfsck /dev/sdb replay-log --log /dev/sdc --replay /dev/sdb --start-mark mkfs \ --fsck "btrfsck /dev/sdb" --check fua And that will replay the log until it sees a FUA request, run the fsck command and if the fsck passes it will replay to the next FUA, until it is completed or the fsck command exists abnormally.