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| author | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> | 2026-04-16 01:11:05 +0300 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> | 2026-04-16 01:11:05 +0300 |
| commit | a5f998094fa344cdd1342164948abb4d7c6101ce (patch) | |
| tree | 804e1470a56e1b449c9fec40a415cc461738ee2b /Documentation | |
| parent | f1d26d72f01556c787b1291729aa7a2ce37656a8 (diff) | |
| parent | 8c0ee19db81f0fa1ff25fd75b22b17c0cc2acde3 (diff) | |
| download | linux-a5f998094fa344cdd1342164948abb4d7c6101ce.tar.xz | |
Merge tag 'for-7.1/dm-changes' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/device-mapper/linux-dm
Pull device mapper updates from Benjamin Marzinski:
"There are fixes for some corner case crashes in dm-cache and
dm-mirror, new setup functionality for dm-vdo, and miscellaneous minor
fixes and cleanups, especially to dm-verity.
dm-vdo:
- Make dm-vdo able to format the device itself, like other dm
targets, instead of needing a userspace formating program
- Add some sanity checks and code cleanup
dm-cache:
- Fix crashes and hangs when operating in passthrough mode (which
have been around, unnoticed, since 4.12), as well as a late
arriving fix for an error path bug in the passthrough fix
- Fix a corner case memory leak
dm-verity:
- Another set of minor bugfixes and code cleanups to the forward
error correction code
dm-mirror
- Fix minor initialization bug
- Fix overflow crash on a large devices with small region sizes
dm-crypt
- Reimplement elephant diffuser using AES library and minor cleanups
dm-core:
- Claude found a buffer overflow in /dev/mapper/contrl ioctl handling
- make dm_mod.wait_for correctly wait for partitions
- minor code fixes and cleanups"
* tag 'for-7.1/dm-changes' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/device-mapper/linux-dm: (62 commits)
dm cache: fix missing return in invalidate_committed's error path
dm: fix a buffer overflow in ioctl processing
dm-crypt: Make crypt_iv_operations::post return void
dm vdo: Fix spelling mistake "postive" -> "positive"
dm: provide helper to set stacked limits
dm-integrity: always set the io hints
dm-integrity: fix mismatched queue limits
dm-bufio: use kzalloc_flex
dm vdo: save the formatted metadata to disk
dm vdo: add formatting logic and initialization
dm vdo: add synchronous metadata I/O submission helper
dm vdo: add geometry block structure
dm vdo: add geometry block encoding
dm vdo: add upfront validation for logical size
dm vdo: add formatting parameters to table line
dm vdo: add super block initialization to encodings.c
dm vdo: add geometry block initialization to encodings.c
dm-crypt: Make crypt_iv_operations::wipe return void
dm-crypt: Reimplement elephant diffuser using AES library
dm-verity-fec: warn even when there were no errors
...
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/verity.rst | 122 |
1 files changed, 102 insertions, 20 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/verity.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/verity.rst index 3ecab1cff9c6..eb9475d7e196 100644 --- a/Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/verity.rst +++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/verity.rst @@ -102,29 +102,42 @@ ignore_zero_blocks that are not guaranteed to contain zeroes. use_fec_from_device <fec_dev> - Use forward error correction (FEC) to recover from corruption if hash - verification fails. Use encoding data from the specified device. This - may be the same device where data and hash blocks reside, in which case - fec_start must be outside data and hash areas. + Use forward error correction (FEC) parity data from the specified device to + try to automatically recover from corruption and I/O errors. - If the encoding data covers additional metadata, it must be accessible - on the hash device after the hash blocks. + If this option is given, then <fec_roots> and <fec_blocks> must also be + given. <hash_block_size> must also be equal to <data_block_size>. - Note: block sizes for data and hash devices must match. Also, if the - verity <dev> is encrypted the <fec_dev> should be too. + <fec_dev> can be the same as <dev>, in which case <fec_start> must be + outside the data area. It can also be the same as <hash_dev>, in which case + <fec_start> must be outside the hash and optional additional metadata areas. + + If the data <dev> is encrypted, the <fec_dev> should be too. + + For more information, see `Forward error correction`_. fec_roots <num> - Number of generator roots. This equals to the number of parity bytes in - the encoding data. For example, in RS(M, N) encoding, the number of roots - is M-N. + The number of parity bytes in each 255-byte Reed-Solomon codeword. The + Reed-Solomon code used will be an RS(255, k) code where k = 255 - fec_roots. + + The supported values are 2 through 24 inclusive. Higher values provide + stronger error correction. However, the minimum value of 2 already provides + strong error correction due to the use of interleaving, so 2 is the + recommended value for most users. fec_roots=2 corresponds to an + RS(255, 253) code, which has a space overhead of about 0.8%. fec_blocks <num> - The number of encoding data blocks on the FEC device. The block size for - the FEC device is <data_block_size>. + The total number of <data_block_size> blocks that are error-checked using + FEC. This must be at least the sum of <num_data_blocks> and the number of + blocks needed by the hash tree. It can include additional metadata blocks, + which are assumed to be accessible on <hash_dev> following the hash blocks. + + Note that this is *not* the number of parity blocks. The number of parity + blocks is inferred from <fec_blocks>, <fec_roots>, and <data_block_size>. fec_start <offset> - This is the offset, in <data_block_size> blocks, from the start of the - FEC device to the beginning of the encoding data. + This is the offset, in <data_block_size> blocks, from the start of <fec_dev> + to the beginning of the parity data. check_at_most_once Verify data blocks only the first time they are read from the data device, @@ -180,11 +193,6 @@ per-block basis. This allows for a lightweight hash computation on first read into the page cache. Block hashes are stored linearly, aligned to the nearest block size. -If forward error correction (FEC) support is enabled any recovery of -corrupted data will be verified using the cryptographic hash of the -corresponding data. This is why combining error correction with -integrity checking is essential. - Hash Tree --------- @@ -212,6 +220,80 @@ The tree looks something like: / ... \ / . . . \ / \ blk_0 ... blk_127 blk_16256 blk_16383 blk_32640 . . . blk_32767 +Forward error correction +------------------------ + +dm-verity's optional forward error correction (FEC) support adds strong error +correction capabilities to dm-verity. It allows systems that would be rendered +inoperable by errors to continue operating, albeit with reduced performance. + +FEC uses Reed-Solomon (RS) codes that are interleaved across the entire +device(s), allowing long bursts of corrupt or unreadable blocks to be recovered. + +dm-verity validates any FEC-corrected block against the wanted hash before using +it. Therefore, FEC doesn't affect the security properties of dm-verity. + +The integration of FEC with dm-verity provides significant benefits over a +separate error correction layer: + +- dm-verity invokes FEC only when a block's hash doesn't match the wanted hash + or the block cannot be read at all. As a result, FEC doesn't add overhead to + the common case where no error occurs. + +- dm-verity hashes are also used to identify erasure locations for RS decoding. + This allows correcting twice as many errors. + +FEC uses an RS(255, k) code where k = 255 - fec_roots. fec_roots is usually 2. +This means that each k (usually 253) message bytes have fec_roots (usually 2) +bytes of parity data added to get a 255-byte codeword. (Many external sources +call RS codewords "blocks". Since dm-verity already uses the term "block" to +mean something else, we'll use the clearer term "RS codeword".) + +FEC checks fec_blocks blocks of message data in total, consisting of: + +1. The data blocks from the data device +2. The hash blocks from the hash device +3. Optional additional metadata that follows the hash blocks on the hash device + +dm-verity assumes that the FEC parity data was computed as if the following +procedure were followed: + +1. Concatenate the message data from the above sources. +2. Zero-pad to the next multiple of k blocks. Let msg be the resulting byte + array, and msglen its length in bytes. +3. For 0 <= i < msglen / k (for each RS codeword): + a. Select msg[i + j * msglen / k] for 0 <= j < k. + Consider these to be the 'k' message bytes of an RS codeword. + b. Compute the corresponding 'fec_roots' parity bytes of the RS codeword, + and concatenate them to the FEC parity data. + +Step 3a interleaves the RS codewords across the entire device using an +interleaving degree of data_block_size * ceil(fec_blocks / k). This is the +maximal interleaving, such that the message data consists of a region containing +byte 0 of all the RS codewords, then a region containing byte 1 of all the RS +codewords, and so on up to the region for byte 'k - 1'. Note that the number of +codewords is set to a multiple of data_block_size; thus, the regions are +block-aligned, and there is an implicit zero padding of up to 'k - 1' blocks. + +This interleaving allows long bursts of errors to be corrected. It provides +much stronger error correction than storage devices typically provide, while +keeping the space overhead low. + +The cost is slow decoding: correcting a single block usually requires reading +254 extra blocks spread evenly across the device(s). However, that is +acceptable because dm-verity uses FEC only when there is actually an error. + +The list below contains additional details about the RS codes used by +dm-verity's FEC. Userspace programs that generate the parity data need to use +these parameters for the parity data to match exactly: + +- Field used is GF(256) +- Bytes are mapped to/from GF(256) elements in the natural way, where bits 0 + through 7 (low-order to high-order) map to the coefficients of x^0 through x^7 +- Field generator polynomial is x^8 + x^4 + x^3 + x^2 + 1 +- The codes used are systematic, BCH-view codes +- Primitive element alpha is 'x' +- First consecutive root of code generator polynomial is 'x^0' On-disk format ============== |
