Hi, This is the next iteration of the patchset to add a zeroing option which bypasses the inital sync for arrays. This version of the patch set fixes an unitialized variable bug in v5. This patch set adds the --write-zeroes option which will imply --assume-clean and write zeros to the data region in each disk before starting the array. This can take some time so each disk is done in parallel in its own fork. To make the forking code easier to understand this patch set also starts with some cleanup of the existing Create code. We tested write-zeroes requests on a number of modern nvme drives of various manufacturers and found most are not as optimized as the discard path. A couple drives that were tested did not support write-zeroes at all but still performed similarly with the kernel falling back to writing zero pages. Typically we see it take on the order of one minute per 100GB of data zeroed. One reason write-zeroes is slower than discard is that today's NVMe devices only allow about 2MB to be zeroed in one command where as the entire drive can typically be discarded in one command. Partly, this is a limitation of the spec as there are only 16 bits avalaible in the write-zeros command size but drives still don't max this out. Hopefully, in the future this will all be optimized a bit more and this work will be able to take advantage of that. Logan -- Changes since v5: * Ensure 'interrupted' is initialized in wait_for_zero_forks(). (as noticed by Xiao) * Print a message indicating that the zeroing was interrupted. Changes since v4: * Handle SIGINT better. Previous versions would leave the zeroing processes behind after the main thread exitted which would continue zeroing in the background (possibly for some time). This version splits the zero fallocate commands up so they can be interrupted quicker, and intercepts SIGINT in the main thread to print an appropriate message and wait for the threads to finish up. (as noticed by Xiao) Changes since v3: * Store the pid in a local variable instead of the mdinfo struct (per Mariusz and Xiao) Changes since v2: * Use write-zeroes instead of discard to zero the disks (per Martin) * Due to the time required to zero the disks, each disk is now done in parallel with separate forks of the process. * In order to add the forking some refactoring was done on the Create() function to make it easier to understand * Added a pr_info() call so that some prints can be done to stdout instead of stdour (per Mariusz) * Added KIB_TO_BYTES and SEC_TO_BYTES helpers (per Mariusz) * Added a test to the mdadm test suite to test the option works. * Fixed up how the size and offset are calculated with some great information from Xiao. Changes since v1: * Discard the data in the devices later in the create process while they are already open. This requires treating the s.discard option the same as the s.assume_clean option. Per Mariusz. * A couple other minor cleanup changes from Mariusz. -- Logan Gunthorpe (7): Create: goto abort_locked instead of return 1 in error path Create: remove safe_mode_delay local variable Create: Factor out add_disks() helpers mdadm: Introduce pr_info() mdadm: Add --write-zeros option for Create tests/00raid5-zero: Introduce test to exercise --write-zeros. manpage: Add --write-zeroes option to manpage Create.c | 564 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------------- ReadMe.c | 2 + mdadm.8.in | 16 ++ mdadm.c | 9 + mdadm.h | 7 + tests/00raid5-zero | 12 + 6 files changed, 435 insertions(+), 175 deletions(-) create mode 100644 tests/00raid5-zero base-commit: 8b668d4aa3305af5963162b7499b128bd71f8f29 -- 2.30.2