nbd.txt
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上传日期:2013-02-24
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- Network Block Device (TCP version)
-
- Note: Network Block Device is now experimental, which approximately
- means, that it works on my computer, and it worked on one of school
- computers.
-
- What is it: With this compiled in the kernel, Linux can use a remote
- server as one of its block devices. So every time the client computer
- wants to read /dev/nd0, it sends a request over TCP to the server, which
- will reply with the data read. This can be used for stations with
- low disk space (or even diskless - if you boot from floppy) to
- borrow disk space from another computer. Unlike NFS, it is possible to
- put any filesystem on it etc. It is impossible to use NBD as a root
- filesystem, since it requires a user-level program to start. It also
- allows you to run block-device in user land (making server and client
- physically the same computer, communicating using loopback).
-
- Current state: It currently works. Network block device looks like
- being pretty stable. I originally thought that it is impossible to swap
- over TCP. It turned out not to be true - swapping over TCP now works
- and seems to be deadlock-free, but it requires heavy patches into
- Linux's network layer.
-
- Devices: Network block device uses major 43, minors 0..n (where n is
- configurable in nbd.h). Create these files by mknod when needed. After
- that, your ls -l /dev/ should look like:
- brw-rw-rw- 1 root root 43, 0 Apr 11 00:28 nd0
- brw-rw-rw- 1 root root 43, 1 Apr 11 00:28 nd1
- ...
- Protocol: Userland program passes file handle with connected TCP
- socket to actual kernel driver. This way, the kernel does not have to
- care about connecting etc. Protocol is rather simple: If the driver is
- asked to read from block device, it sends packet of following form
- "request" (all data are in network byte order):
-
- __u32 magic; must be equal to 0x12560953
- __u32 from; position in bytes to read from / write at
- __u32 len; number of bytes to be read / written
- __u64 handle; handle of operation
- __u32 type; 0 = read
- 1 = write
- ... in case of write operation, this is
- immediately followed len bytes of data
- When operation is completed, server responds with packet of following
- structure "reply":
-
- __u32 magic; must be equal to
- __u64 handle; handle copied from request
- __u32 error; 0 = operation completed successfully,
- else error code
- ... in case of read operation with no error,
- this is immediately followed len bytes of data
- For more information, look at http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel.