[PATCH] md: new sysfs interface for setting bits in the write-intent-bitmap

Add a new sysfs interface that allows the bitmap of an array to be dirtied.
The interface is write-only, and is used as follows:

echo "1000" > /sys/block/md2/md/bitmap

(dirty the bit for chunk 1000 [offset 0] in the in-memory and on-disk
bitmaps of array md2)

echo "1000-2000" > /sys/block/md1/md/bitmap

(dirty the bits for chunks 1000-2000 in md1's bitmap)

This is useful, for example, in cluster environments where you may need to
combine two disjoint bitmaps into one (following a server failure, after a
secondary server has taken over the array).  By combining the bitmaps on
the two servers, a full resync can be avoided (This was discussed on the
list back on March 18, 2005, "[PATCH 1/2] md bitmap bug fixes" thread).

Signed-off-by: Neil Brown <neilb@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>

1 files changed, 9 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/md.txt b/Documentation/md.txt
index 0668f9dc9d29..084ecf4eb2f8 100644
--- a/Documentation/md.txt
+++ b/Documentation/md.txt
@@ -410,6 +410,15 @@ also have
       than sectors, this my be larger than the number of actual errors
       by a factor of the number of sectors in a page.
 
+   bitmap_set_bits
+      If the array has a write-intent bitmap, then writing to this
+      attribute can set bits in the bitmap, indicating that a resync
+      would need to check the corresponding blocks. Either individual
+      numbers or start-end pairs can be written.  Multiple numbers
+      can be separated by a space.
+      Note that the numbers are 'bit' numbers, not 'block' numbers.
+      They should be scaled by the bitmap_chunksize.
+
 Each active md device may also have attributes specific to the
 personality module that manages it.
 These are specific to the implementation of the module and could