Provided by: ndctl_72.1-1_amd64 
NAME
ndctl-create-namespace - provision or reconfigure a namespace
SYNOPSIS
ndctl create-namespace [<options>]
THEORY OF OPERATION
The capacity of an NVDIMM REGION (contiguous span of persistent memory) is accessed via one or more
NAMESPACE devices. REGION is the Linux term for what ACPI and UEFI call a DIMM-interleave-set, or a
system-physical-address-range that is striped (by the memory controller) across one or more memory
modules.
The UEFI specification defines the NVDIMM Label Protocol as the combination of label area access methods
and a data format for provisioning one or more NAMESPACE objects from a REGION. Note that label support
is optional and if Linux does not detect the label capability it will automatically instantiate a
"label-less" namespace per region. Examples of label-less namespaces are the ones created by the kernel’s
memmap=ss!nn command line option (see the nvdimm wiki on kernel.org), or NVDIMMs without a valid
namespace index in their label area.
Note
Label-less namespaces lack many of the features of their label-rich cousins. For example, their size
cannot be modified, or they cannot be fully destroyed (i.e. the space reclaimed). A destroy operation
will zero any mode-specific metadata. Finally, for create-namespace operations on label-less
namespaces, ndctl bypasses the region capacity availability checks, and always satisfies the request
using the full region capacity. The only reconfiguration operation supported on a label-less
namespace is changing its mode.
A namespace can be provisioned to operate in one of 4 modes, fsdax, devdax, sector, and raw. Here are the
expected usage models for these modes:
• fsdax: Filesystem-DAX mode is the default mode of a namespace when specifying ndctl create-namespace
with no options. It creates a block device (/dev/pmemX[.Y]) that supports the DAX capabilities of
Linux filesystems (xfs and ext4 to date). DAX removes the page cache from the I/O path and allows
mmap(2) to establish direct mappings to persistent memory media. The DAX capability enables workloads
/ working-sets that would exceed the capacity of the page cache to scale up to the capacity of
persistent memory. Workloads that fit in page cache or perform bulk data transfers may not see
benefit from DAX. When in doubt, pick this mode.
• devdax: Device-DAX mode enables similar mmap(2) DAX mapping capabilities as Filesystem-DAX. However,
instead of a block-device that can support a DAX-enabled filesystem, this mode emits a single
character device file (/dev/daxX.Y). Use this mode to assign persistent memory to a virtual-machine,
register persistent memory for RDMA, or when gigantic mappings are needed.
• sector: Use this mode to host legacy filesystems that do not checksum metadata or applications that
are not prepared for torn sectors after a crash. Expected usage for this mode is for small boot
volumes. This mode is compatible with other operating systems.
• raw: Raw mode is effectively just a memory disk that does not support DAX. Typically this indicates a
namespace that was created by tooling or another operating system that did not know how to create a
Linux fsdax or devdax mode namespace. This mode is compatible with other operating systems, but
again, does not support DAX operation.
EXAMPLES
Create a maximally sized pmem namespace in fsdax mode (the default)
ndctl create-namespace
Convert namespace0.0 to sector mode
ndctl create-namespace -f -e namespace0.0 --mode=sector
OPTIONS
-t, --type=
Create a pmem or blk namespace (subject to available capacity). A pmem namespace supports the dax
(direct access) capability to mmap(2) persistent memory directly into a process address space. A blk
namespace access persistent memory through a block-window-aperture. Compared to pmem it supports a
traditional storage error model (EIO on error rather than a cpu exception on a bad memory access),
but it does not support dax.
-m, --mode=
• "raw": expose the namespace capacity directly with limitations. Neither a raw pmem namepace nor
raw blk namespace support sector atomicity by default (see "sector" mode below). A raw pmem
namespace may have limited to no dax support depending the kernel. In other words operations like
direct-I/O targeting a dax buffer may fail for a pmem namespace in raw mode or indirect through a
page-cache buffer. See "fsdax" and "devdax" mode for dax operation.
• "sector": persistent memory, given that it is byte addressable, does not support sector
atomicity. The problematic aspect of sector tearing is that most applications do not know they
have a atomic sector update dependency. At least a disk rarely ever tears sectors and if it does
it almost certainly returns a checksum error on access. Persistent memory devices will always
tear and always silently. Until an application is audited to be robust in the presence of
sector-tearing "safe" mode is recommended. This imposes some performance overhead and disables
the dax capability. (also known as "safe" or "btt" mode)
• "fsdax": A pmem namespace in this mode supports dax operation with a block-device based
filesystem (in previous ndctl releases this mode was named "memory" mode). This mode comes at the
cost of allocating per-page metadata. The capacity can be allocated from "System RAM", or from a
reserved portion of "Persistent Memory" (see the --map= option). NOTE: A filesystem that supports
DAX is required for dax operation. If the raw block device (/dev/pmemX) is used directly without
a filesystem, it will use the page cache. See "devdax" mode for raw device access that supports
dax.
• "devdax": The device-dax character device interface is a statically allocated / raw access
analogue of filesystem-dax (in previous ndctl releases this mode was named "dax" mode). It allows
memory ranges to be mapped without need of an intervening filesystem. The device-dax is interface
strict, precise and predictable. Specifically the interface:
• Guarantees fault granularity with respect to a given page size (4K, 2M, or 1G on x86) set at
configuration time.
• Enforces deterministic behavior by being strict about what fault scenarios are supported.
I.e. if a device is configured with a 2M alignment an attempt to fault a 4K aligned offset
will result in SIGBUS. :: Note both fsdax and devdax mode require 16MiB physical alignment to
be cross-arch compatible. By default ndctl will block attempts to create namespaces in these
modes when the physical starting address of the namespace is not 16MiB aligned. The --force
option tries to override this constraint if the platform supports a smaller alignment, but
this is not recommended.
-s, --size=
For NVDIMM devices that support namespace labels, set the namespace size in bytes. Otherwise it
defaults to the maximum size specified by platform firmware. This option supports the suffixes "k" or
"K" for KiB, "m" or "M" for MiB, "g" or "G" for GiB and "t" or "T" for TiB.
For pmem namepsaces the size must be a multiple of the
interleave-width and the namespace alignment (see
below).
-a, --align
Applications that want to establish dax memory mappings with page table entries greater than system
base page size (4K on x86) need a persistent memory namespace that is sufficiently aligned. For
"fsdax" and "devdax" mode this defaults to 2M. Note that "devdax" mode enforces all mappings to be
aligned to this value, i.e. it fails unaligned mapping attempts. The "fsdax" alignment setting
determines the starting alignment of filesystem extents and may limit the possible granularities, if
a large mapping is not possible it will silently fall back to a smaller page size.
-e, --reconfig=
Reconfigure an existing namespace. This option is a shortcut for the following sequence:
• Read all parameters from @victim_namespace
• Destroy @victim_namespace
• Create @new_namespace merging old parameters with new ones :: Note that the major implication of
a destroy-create cycle is that data from @victim_namespace is not preserved in @new_namespace.
The attributes transferred from @victim_namespace are the geometry, mode, and name (not uuid
without --uuid=). No attempt is made to preserve the data and any old data that is visible in
@new_namespace is by coincidence not convention. "Backup and restore" is the only reliable method
to populate @new_namespace with data from @victim_namespace.
-u, --uuid=
This option is not recommended as a new uuid should be generated every time a namespace is
(re-)created. For recovery scenarios however the uuid may be specified.
-n, --name=
For NVDIMM devices that support namespace labels, specify a human friendly name for a namespace. This
name is available as a device attribute for use in udev rules.
-l, --sector-size
Specify the logical sector size (LBA size) of the Linux block device associated with an namespace.
-M, --map=
A pmem namespace in "fsdax" or "devdax" mode requires allocation of per-page metadata. The allocation
can be drawn from either:
• "mem": typical system memory
• "dev": persistent memory reserved from the namespace :: Given relative capacities of "Persistent
Memory" to "System RAM" the allocation defaults to reserving space out of the namespace directly
("--map=dev"). The overhead is 64-bytes per 4K (16GB per 1TB) on x86.
-c, --continue
Do not stop after creating one namespace. Instead, greedily create as many namespaces as possible
within the given --bus and --region filter restrictions. This will abort if any creation attempt
results in an error unless --force is also supplied.
-f, --force
Unless this option is specified the reconfigure namespace operation will fail if the namespace is
presently active. Specifying --force causes the namespace to be disabled before the operation is
attempted. However, if the namespace is mounted then the disable namespace and reconfigure namespace
operations will be aborted. The namespace must be unmounted before being reconfigured. When used in
conjunction with --continue, continue the namespace creation loop even if an error is encountered for
intermediate namespaces.
-L, --autolabel, --no-autolabel
Legacy NVDIMM devices do not support namespace labels. In that case the kernel creates region-sized
namespaces that can not be deleted. Their mode can be changed, but they can not be resized smaller
than their parent region. This is termed a "label-less namespace". In contrast, NVDIMMs and
hypervisors that support the ACPI 6.2 label area definition (ACPI 6.2 Section 6.5.10 NVDIMM Label
Methods) support "labelled namespace" operation.
• There are two cases where the kernel will default to label-less operation:
• NVDIMM does not support labels
• The NVDIMM supports labels, but the Label Index Block (see UEFI 2.7) is not present and there
is no capacity aliasing between blk and pmem regions.
• In the latter case the configuration can be upgraded to labelled operation by writing an index
block on all DIMMs in a region and re-enabling that region. The autolabel capability of ndctl
create-namespace --reconfig tries to do this by default if it can determine that all DIMM
capacity is referenced by the namespace being reconfigured. It will otherwise fail to autolabel
and remain in label-less mode if it finds a DIMM contributes capacity to more than one region.
This check prevents inadvertent data loss of that other region is in active use. The --autolabel
option is implied by default, the --no-autolabel option can be used to disable this behavior.
When automatic labeling fails and labelled operation is still desired the safety policy can be
bypassed by the following commands, note that all data on all regions is forfeited by running
these commands:
ndctl disable-region all
ndctl init-labels all
ndctl enable-region all
-R, --autorecover, --no-autorecover
By default, if a namespace creation attempt fails, ndctl will cleanup the partially initialized
namespace. Use --no-autorecover to disable this behavior for debug and development scenarios where it
useful to have the label and info-block state preserved after a failure.
-v, --verbose
Emit debug messages for the namespace creation process
-r, --region=
A regionX device name, or a region id number. Restrict the operation to the specified region(s). The
keyword all can be specified to indicate the lack of any restriction, however this is the same as not
supplying a --region option at all.
-b, --bus=
A bus id number, or a provider string (e.g. "ACPI.NFIT"). Restrict the operation to the specified
bus(es). The keyword all can be specified to indicate the lack of any restriction, however this is
the same as not supplying a --bus option at all.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2016 - 2020, Intel Corporation. License GPLv2: GNU GPL version 2
http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html. This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
SEE ALSO
ndctl-zero-labels(1), ndctl-init-labels(1), ndctl-disable-namespace(1), ndctl-enable-namespace(1), UEFI
NVDIMM Label Protocol <http://www.uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI_Spec_2_7.pdf> Linux
Persistent Memory Wiki <https://nvdimm.wiki.kernel.org>
ndctl 2022-01-24 NDCTL-CREATE-NAMESPACE(1)