Copyright (C) 2009-2014, HGST, Inc.
Copyright (C) 2016, Western Digital.
libzbc is a simple library providing functions for manipulating SCSI and ATA devices supporting the Zoned Block Command (ZBC) and Zoned-device ATA command set (ZAC) specifications.
libzbc implementation is compliant with the latest drafts of the ZBC and ZAC standards defined by INCITS technical committee T10 and T13 (respectively).
In addition to supporting ZBC and ZAC disks, libzbc also implements an emulation mode allowing to imitate the behavior of a host managed zoned disk using a regular file or a standard block device as backing store.
Several example applications using libzbc are available under the tools directory.
libzbc current major version is 5. Due to interface changes, this version is not compatible with previous *libzbc+ versions (version 4.x). Overall, the library operation does not change, but applications written for previous libzbc versions must be updated to use the new API.
libzbc latest version is implements ZBC and ZAC standards revision 05. Support for the older draft standards are available with previous releases and pre-releases.
libzbc is distributed under the terms of the of the BSD 2-clause license ("Simplified BSD License" or "FreeBSD License"). A copy of this license with the library copyright can be found in the COPYING.BSD file.
All example applications under the tools directory are distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3, or any later version. A copy of version 3 of this license can be found in the COPYING.LESSER file.
libzbc and all its example applications are distributed "as is," without technical support, and WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Along with libzbc, you should have received a copy of the BSD 2-clause license and of the GNU Lesser General Public License. If not, please see http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause and http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
Contributions are accepted as github pull requests. Any problem may also be reported through github issue page or by contacting:
- Damien Le Moal ([email protected])
- Dmitry Fomichev ([email protected])
PLEASE DO NOT SUBMIT CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION OR INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO DRIVES THAT ARE VENDOR SAMPLES OR NOT PUBLICLY AVAILABLE.
libzbc requires that the autoconf, automake and libtool development packages be installed on the host used for compilation. The GTK3 and GTK3 development packages are necessary to compile the gzbc application. Installing these packages will automatically enable the compilation of gzbc.
To compile the library and all example applications under the tools directory, execute the following commands.
# sh ./autogen.sh
# ./configure
# make
To install the library and all example applications compiled under the tools directory, execute the following command.
# sudo make install
The library file is by default installed under /usr/lib (or /usr/lib64). The library header file is installed in /usr/include/libzbc. The executable files for the example applications are installed under /usr/bin. These defaults can be changed using the configure script. Executing the following command displays the options used to control the installation paths.
# ./configure --help
The gzbc and gzviewer tools implement a graphical user interface (GUI) using
the GTK3 toolkit. The configure script will automatically detect the presence of
GTK3 development headers and compile these tools if the header files are found.
This behavior can be manually changed and the compilation of gzbc and
gzviewer disabled using the --disable-gui configuration option.
# ./configure --disable-gui
The test directory contains several test programs and scripts allowing testing the compatibility of libzbc with a particular device. That is, testing if a device follows the same standard as currently supported by libzbc. The compilation of these test programs is disabled by default.
To compile the test programs, libzbc must be configured as follows.
# ./configure --with-test
The test programs and scripts are not affected by the execution of "make install". All defined tests must be executed directly from the test directory using the zbc_test.sh script. To test the device /dev/, the following can be executed.
# cd test
# sudo ./zbc_test.sh /dev/<SG node>
By default, the script will run through all the test cases. Detailed control
of the test execution is possible using the -e (execute) and -s(skip)
options. Run zbc_test.sh --help for details.
libzbc tests check the detailed error output from the device for invalid commands. This detailed error output cannot be obtained for a device being accessed using the block device backend driver. Specifying a block device file for the tests is thus not allowed.
Each test outputs a log file in the test/log directory. These files can be
consulted in case of a failed test to identify the reason for the test failure.
libzbc functions operate using a device handle obtained by executing the zbc_open() function. The path specified to identify a device can point to a regular file, a block device file (/dev/sdX)or an SG node device file (/dev/sgY).
As host-aware devices are backward-compatible with regular block device files (device type/signature 0x00), a host-aware device will always be accessible either through a block device file as well as its SG node device file.
For host-managed devices, the different device type and device signature require kernel support for block device files to be enabled. Kernel support for host-managed devices has been added with Linux kernel 4.10. For older kernels, host-managed devices will be accessible only through their SG node device files. Kernel support for the ZAC host-managed device signature (0xabcd) was introduced in kernel 3.18. Any kernel older than this version will not create an SG node device file for ZAC host-managed devices connected to an AHCI SATA port on the target host.
Regular files and block device files for regular devices can be used to operate libzbc in emulation mode. This will enable exposing the target file or block device as a host-managed zoned device.
libzbc provides functions for discovering the zone configuration of a zoned device and for accessing the device. Accesses to the device may result in changes to the device zones condition, attributes and state (such as a sequential zone write pointer location). These changes are not internally tracked by libzbc. The functions provided to obtain the device zone information only provide a snapshot of the zone condition and state when executed. It is the responsability of an application to implement tracking of the device zone changes (such as increment to a sequential zone write pointer as writes to the zone are executed) if necessary.
All libzbc functions since version 5.0.0 use 512B sector unit for reporting zone information and as the addressing unit for device accesses, regardless of the actual device logical block size. This unification in the unit used by all API functions can simplify application development by hiding potential differences in logical block sizes between devices. However, application programmers must be careful to always implement write accesses to sequential write required zones of the device in multiple of the physical block size.
The main functions provided by libzbc are as follows.
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
| zbc_open() | Open a zoned device |
| zbc_close() | Close a zoned device |
| zbc_get_device_info() | Get device information |
| zbc_report_nr_zones() | Get the number of zones of the device |
| zbc_report_zones() |
|
| zbc_list_zones() | Get zone information |
| zbc_zone_operation() | Execute a zone operation |
| zbc_open_zone() | Explicitely open a zone |
| zbc_close_zone() | Close an open zone |
| zbc_finish_zone() | Finish a zone |
| zbc_reset_zone() | Reset a zone write pointer |
| zbc_pread() | Read data from a zone |
| zbc_preadv() | Read data from a zone using vectored buffer |
| zbc_pwrite() | Write data to a zone |
| zbc_pwritev() | Write data to a zone using vectored buffer |
| zbc_flush() | Flush data to disk |
Additionally, the following functions are also provided to facilitate application development and tests.
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
| zbc_map_iov() | Map a vectored buffer using a single buffer |
| zbc_set_log_level() | Set the logging level of the library functions |
| zbc_device_is_zoned() | Test if a device is a zoned block device |
| zbc_print_device_info() | Print device information to a file (stream) |
| zbc_device_type_str() | Get a string description of a device type |
| zbc_device_model_str() | Get a string description of a device model |
| zbc_zone_type_str() | Get a string description of a zone type |
| zbc_zone_condition_str() | Get a string description of a zone condition |
| zbc_errno() | Get the sense key and code of the last function call |
| zbc_sk_str() | Get a string description of a sense key |
| zbc_asc_ascq_str() | Get a string description of a sense code |
libzbc does not implement any synchronization mechanism for multiple threads or processes to safely operate simultaneously on the same zone. In particular, concurrent write operations by multiple threads to the same zone may result in write errors without write ordering control by the application. The zbc_errno() function is the only exception to this rule. This function is thread safe and does not require serialized execution by the application.
Linux kernels older than version 4.10 do not create a block device file for host-managed ZBC and ZAC devices. As a result, these devices can only be accessed through their associated SG node (/dev/sgx device file). For these older kernels, opening a ZBC or ZAC host managed disk with libzbc must thus be done using the device SG node. For kernel versions 4.10 and beyond compiled with zoned block device support, the device will be exposed also through a block device file which can be used with libzbc to identify the device.
For host-aware devices, a block device file and an SG node file will exist and can both be used to open the device.
Once the device is open, accesses to the device are done transparently using the device handle returned by the zbc_open() function. Operations such as report zones, reset zone write pointer, etc. only need the device handle.
libzbc can emulate host-managed disks operation using a regular file or a legacy standard block device file (regular disk or loopback device). The use of the library in such case is identical to the native mode case, assuming that the emulated device is first configured by executing the zbc_set_zones tool. For an emulated zoned block device setup using a regular block device, the block device file of the backend device must always be used. Using the backend device SG node file will not work.
More detailed information on libzbc functions and data types is available
through the comments in the file include/libzbc/zbc.h. This file has comments
formatted with the doxygen convention. HTML files documenting libzbc API can
be generated using the doxygen project file documentation/libzbc.doxygen.
# cd documentation
# doxygen libzbc.doxygen
Under the tools directory, several simple applications are available as examples. These appliations are as follows.
-
zbc_info This application tests if a device file points to a physical zoned device supporting ZBC or ZAC features. This excludes the emulation mode implemented by libzbc. If the device is identified as a zoned device, some information about the device are displayed (e.g. the device type, capacity, sector size, etc).
-
zbc_report_zones This application illustrates the use of the zone reporting functions zbc_report_zones(), zbc_report_nr_zones() and zbc_list_zones(). zbc_report_zones obtains the zone information of a device and displays it in readable form on the standard output.
-
zbc_open_zone This application illustrates the use of the zbc_open_zone() function allowing opening a zone.
-
zbc_close_zone This application illustrates the use of the zbc_close_zone() function allowing closing a zone.
-
zbc_finish_zone This application illustrates the use of the zbc_finish_zone() function allowing finishing a zone.
-
zbc_reset_zone This application illustrates the use of the zbc_reset_zone() function allowing resetting the write pointer of a zone to the first sector of the zone.
-
zbc_read_zone This application reads data from a zone, up to the zone write pointer location and either sends the read data to the standard output or copies the data to a regular file. Its implementation illustrates the use of the functions zbc_pread() and zbc_preadv().
-
zbc_write_zone This application illustrates the use of the functions zbc_pwrite() and zbc_pwritev() to write data to a zone at the zone write pointer location.
-
zbc_set_zones This application can be used to initialize the ZBC emulation mode for a regular file or a raw standard block device.
-
zbc_set_write_ptr This application can be used to set the write pointer of a zone of an emulated ZBC device to any LBA value (within the range of the specified zone). It is intended for testing purposes only and is not valid for native ZBC devices.
-
gzbc provides a graphical user interface showing zone information of a zoned device. It also displays the write status (write pointer position) of zones graphically using color coding (red for written space and green for unwritten space). Some operations on zones can also be executed directly from the interface (reset zone write pointer, open zone, close zone, etc).
-
gzviewer provides a simple graphical user interface showing the write pointer position and zone state of zones of a zoned device. Similar color coding as gzbc is used.