Re: [PATCH v3 0/2] New zoned loop block device driver

[Damien Le Moal <dlemoal@kernel.org>]

On 4/7/25 16:52, Damien Le Moal wrote:
> This patch series implements the new "zloop" zoned block device driver
> which allows creating zoned block devices using one regular file per
> zone as backing storage. This driver is an alternative to the RUST
> rublk driver which provide a similar functionality using ublk
> (See https://github.com/ublk-org/rublk.git). However, zloop is far
> simpler to use (a single shell command to setup and teardown a device)
> and does not have any user space dependencies. These characteristics
> make zloop a better solution for integration in test environments (such
> as xfstests) using small VMs.

Jens,

Can we get this queued ?

> 
> zloop and rublk performance is generally comparable. zloop is a bit
> faster for large sequential write operations than rublk, while rublk is
> faster for small zone-random write IOs.
> 
> The first patch implements the "zloop" zoned block device driver under
> drivers/block. The second patch adds documentation for this driver
> (overview and usage examples).
> 
> About half of the code of the first patch is from Christoph Hellwig.
> 
> Damien Le Moal (2):
>   block: new zoned loop block device driver
>   Documentation: Document the new zoned loop block device driver
> 
> Changes from v2:
>  - Rebased on 6.15-rc1
>  - Some corrections of the documentation
> 
> Changes from v1:
>  - Corrected Kconfig description in patch 1 (outdated example was shown)
>  - Added missing request sector update on completion of zone append
>    request (I had not pushed that...)
>  - Added reference to the documentation in the kconfig entry in patch 2
> 
> Damien Le Moal (2):
>   block: new zoned loop block device driver
>   Documentation: Document the new zoned loop block device driver
> 
>  Documentation/admin-guide/blockdev/index.rst  |    1 +
>  .../admin-guide/blockdev/zoned_loop.rst       |  169 ++
>  MAINTAINERS                                   |    8 +
>  drivers/block/Kconfig                         |   19 +
>  drivers/block/Makefile                        |    1 +
>  drivers/block/zloop.c                         | 1385 +++++++++++++++++
>  6 files changed, 1583 insertions(+)
>  create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/blockdev/zoned_loop.rst
>  create mode 100644 drivers/block/zloop.c
> 


-- 
Damien Le Moal
Western Digital Research