1NDCTL-CREATE-NAMESPACE(1) ndctl Manual NDCTL-CREATE-NAMESPACE(1)
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6 ndctl-create-namespace - provision or reconfigure a namespace
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9 ndctl create-namespace [<options>]
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12 The capacity of an NVDIMM REGION (contiguous span of persistent memory)
13 is accessed via one or more NAMESPACE devices. REGION is the Linux term
14 for what ACPI and UEFI call a DIMM-interleave-set, or a
15 system-physical-address-range that is striped (by the memory
16 controller) across one or more memory modules.
17 The UEFI specification defines the NVDIMM Label Protocol as the
19 combination of label area access methods and a data format for
20 provisioning one or more NAMESPACE objects from a REGION. Note that
21 label support is optional and if Linux does not detect the label
22 capability it will automatically instantiate a "label-less" namespace
23 per region. Examples of label-less namespaces are the ones created by
24 the kernel’s memmap=ss!nn command line option (see the nvdimm wiki on
25 kernel.org), or NVDIMMs without a valid namespace index in their label
26 area.
27 A namespace can be provisioned to operate in one of 4 modes, fsdax,
29 devdax, sector, and raw. Here are the expected usage models for these
30 modes:
31 · fsdax: Filesystem-DAX mode is the default mode of a namespace when
33 specifying ndctl create-namespace with no options. It creates a
34 block device (/dev/pmemX[.Y]) that supports the DAX capabilities of
35 Linux filesystems (xfs and ext4 to date). DAX removes the page
36 cache from the I/O path and allows mmap(2) to establish direct
37 mappings to persistent memory media. The DAX capability enables
38 workloads / working-sets that would exceed the capacity of the page
39 cache to scale up to the capacity of persistent memory. Workloads
40 that fit in page cache or perform bulk data transfers may not see
41 benefit from DAX. When in doubt, pick this mode.
42 · devdax: Device-DAX mode enables similar mmap(2) DAX mapping
44 capabilities as Filesystem-DAX. However, instead of a block-device
45 that can support a DAX-enabled filesystem, this mode emits a single
46 character device file (/dev/daxX.Y). Use this mode to assign
47 persistent memory to a virtual-machine, register persistent memory
48 for RDMA, or when gigantic mappings are needed.
49 · sector: Use this mode to host legacy filesystems that do not
51 checksum metadata or applications that are not prepared for torn
52 sectors after a crash. Expected usage for this mode is for small
53 boot volumes. This mode is compatible with other operating systems.
54 · raw: Raw mode is effectively just a memory disk that does not
56 support DAX. Typically this indicates a namespace that was created
57 by tooling or another operating system that did not know how to
58 create a Linux fsdax or devdax mode namespace. This mode is
59 compatible with other operating systems, but again, does not
60 support DAX operation.
61
63 Create a maximally sized pmem namespace in fsdax mode (the default)
64 ndctl create-namespace
66 Convert namespace0.0 to sector mode
68 ndctl create-namespace -f -e namespace0.0 --mode=sector
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72 -t, --type=
73 Create a pmem or blk namespace (subject to available capacity). A
74 pmem namespace supports the dax (direct access) capability to
75 mmap(2) persistent memory directly into a process address space. A
76 blk namespace access persistent memory through a
77 block-window-aperture. Compared to pmem it supports a traditional
78 storage error model (EIO on error rather than a cpu exception on a
79 bad memory access), but it does not support dax.
80 -m, --mode=
82 · "raw": expose the namespace capacity directly with limitations.
84 Neither a raw pmem namepace nor raw blk namespace support
85 sector atomicity by default (see "sector" mode below). A raw
86 pmem namespace may have limited to no dax support depending the
87 kernel. In other words operations like direct-I/O targeting a
88 dax buffer may fail for a pmem namespace in raw mode or
89 indirect through a page-cache buffer. See "fsdax" and "devdax"
90 mode for dax operation.
91 · "sector": persistent memory, given that it is byte addressable,
93 does not support sector atomicity. The problematic aspect of
94 sector tearing is that most applications do not know they have
95 a atomic sector update dependency. At least a disk rarely ever
96 tears sectors and if it does it almost certainly returns a
97 checksum error on access. Persistent memory devices will always
98 tear and always silently. Until an application is audited to be
99 robust in the presence of sector-tearing "safe" mode is
100 recommended. This imposes some performance overhead and
101 disables the dax capability. (also known as "safe" or "btt"
102 mode)
103 · "fsdax": A pmem namespace in this mode supports dax operation
105 with a block-device based filesystem (in previous ndctl
106 releases this mode was named "memory" mode). This mode comes at
107 the cost of allocating per-page metadata. The capacity can be
108 allocated from "System RAM", or from a reserved portion of
109 "Persistent Memory" (see the --map= option). NOTE: A filesystem
110 that supports DAX is required for dax operation. If the raw
111 block device (/dev/pmemX) is used directly without a
112 filesystem, it will use the page cache. See "devdax" mode for
113 raw device access that supports dax.
114 · "devdax": The device-dax character device interface is a
116 statically allocated / raw access analogue of filesystem-dax
117 (in previous ndctl releases this mode was named "dax" mode). It
118 allows memory ranges to be mapped without need of an
119 intervening filesystem. The device-dax is interface strict,
120 precise and predictable. Specifically the interface:
121 · Guarantees fault granularity with respect to a given page
123 size (4K, 2M, or 1G on x86) set at configuration time.
124 · Enforces deterministic behavior by being strict about what
126 fault scenarios are supported. I.e. if a device is
127 configured with a 2M alignment an attempt to fault a 4K
128 aligned offset will result in SIGBUS.
129 -s, --size=
131 For NVDIMM devices that support namespace labels, set the namespace
132 size in bytes. Otherwise it defaults to the maximum size specified
133 by platform firmware. This option supports the suffixes "k" or "K"
134 for KiB, "m" or "M" for MiB, "g" or "G" for GiB and "t" or "T" for
135 TiB.
136 For pmem namepsaces the size must be a multiple of the
138 interleave-width and the namespace alignment (see
139 below).
140 -a, --align
142 Applications that want to establish dax memory mappings with page
143 table entries greater than system base page size (4K on x86) need a
144 persistent memory namespace that is sufficiently aligned. For
145 "fsdax" and "devdax" mode this defaults to 2M. Note that "devdax"
146 mode enforces all mappings to be aligned to this value, i.e. it
147 fails unaligned mapping attempts. The "fsdax" alignment setting
148 determines the starting alignment of filesystem extents and may
149 limit the possible granularities, if a large mapping is not
150 possible it will silently fall back to a smaller page size.
151 -e, --reconfig=
153 Reconfigure an existing namespace (change the mode, sector size,
154 etc...). All namespace parameters, save uuid, default to the
155 current attributes of the specified namespace. The namespace is
156 then re-created with the specified modifications. The uuid is
157 refreshed to a new value by default whenever the data layout of a
158 namespace is changed, see --uuid= to set a specific uuid.
159 -u, --uuid=
161 This option is not recommended as a new uuid should be generated
162 every time a namespace is (re-)created. For recovery scenarios
163 however the uuid may be specified.
164 -n, --name=
166 For NVDIMM devices that support namespace labels, specify a human
167 friendly name for a namespace. This name is available as a device
168 attribute for use in udev rules.
169 -l, --sector-size
171 Specify the logical sector size (LBA size) of the Linux block
172 device associated with an namespace.
173 -M, --map=
175 A pmem namespace in "fsdax" or "devdax" mode requires allocation of
176 per-page metadata. The allocation can be drawn from either:
177 · "mem": typical system memory
179 · "dev": persistent memory reserved from the namespace
181 Given relative capacities of "Persistent Memory" to "System
183 RAM" the allocation defaults to reserving space out of the
184 namespace directly ("--map=dev"). The overhead is 64-bytes per
185 4K (16GB per 1TB) on x86.
186 -f, --force
188 Unless this option is specified the reconfigure namespace operation
189 will fail if the namespace is presently active. Specifying --force
190 causes the namespace to be disabled before the operation is
191 attempted. However, if the namespace is mounted then the disable
192 namespace and reconfigure namespace operations will be aborted. The
193 namespace must be unmounted before being reconfigured.
194 -L, --autolabel, --no-autolabel
196 Legacy NVDIMM devices do not support namespace labels. In that case
197 the kernel creates region-sized namespaces that can not be deleted.
198 Their mode can be changed, but they can not be resized smaller than
199 their parent region. This is termed a "label-less namespace". In
200 contrast, NVDIMMs and hypervisors that support the ACPI 6.2 label
201 area definition (ACPI 6.2 Section 6.5.10 NVDIMM Label Methods)
202 support "labelled namespace" operation.
203 · There are two cases where the kernel will default to label-less
205 operation:
206 · NVDIMM does not support labels
208 · The NVDIMM supports labels, but the Label Index Block (see
210 UEFI 2.7) is not present and there is no capacity aliasing
211 between blk and pmem regions.
212 · In the latter case the configuration can be upgraded to
214 labelled operation by writing an index block on all DIMMs in a
215 region and re-enabling that region. The autolabel capability of
216 ndctl create-namespace --reconfig tries to do this by default
217 if it can determine that all DIMM capacity is referenced by the
218 namespace being reconfigured. It will otherwise fail to
219 autolabel and remain in label-less mode if it finds a DIMM
220 contributes capacity to more than one region. This check
221 prevents inadvertent data loss of that other region is in
222 active use. The --autolabel option is implied by default, the
223 --no-autolabel option can be used to disable this behavior.
224 When automatic labeling fails and labelled operation is still
225 desired the safety policy can be bypassed by the following
226 commands, note that all data on all regions is forfeited by
227 running these commands:
228 ndctl disable-region all
230 ndctl init-labels all
231 ndctl enable-region all
232 -v, --verbose
234 Emit debug messages for the namespace creation process
235 -r, --region=
237 A 'regionX' device name, or a region id number. The keyword 'all' can
239 be specified to carry out the operation on every region in the system,
240 optionally filtered by bus id (see --bus= option).
241 -b, --bus=
243 Enforce that the operation only be carried on devices that are
244 attached to the given bus. Where bus can be a provider name or a
245 bus id number.
246
248 Copyright (c) 2016 - 2019, Intel Corporation. License GPLv2: GNU GPL
249 version 2 <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. This is free software:
250 you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to
251 the extent permitted by law.
252
254 ndctl-zero-labels(1), ndctl-init-labels(1), ndctl-disable-namespace(1),
255 ndctl-enable-namespace(1), UEFI NVDIMM Label Protocol <http://
256 www.uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI_Spec_2_7.pdf> Linux
257 Persistent Memory Wiki <https://nvdimm.wiki.kernel.org>
258ndctl 2019-05-10 NDCTL-CREATE-NAMESPACE(1)