VOOZH about

URL: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.18-RAID-Linear-Atomic

⇱ Linux 6.18 Linear RAID "md-linear" To Support Atomic Writes - Phoronix


👁 Phoronix

Linux 6.18 Linear RAID "md-linear" To Support Atomic Writes

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Storage on 25 September 2025 at 12:00 PM EDT. 3 Comments
Building off the work in months prior around Device Mapper atomic write support and related infrastructure, the md-linear target for linear software RAID support will enable atomic write support with the upcoming Linux 6.18 merge window.

Queued in the md-6.18 Git branch of the MDRAID Git tree is enabling atomic writes for the md-linear target.

John Garry of Oracle explained in that commit:
"All the infrastructure has already been plumbed to support this for stacked devices, so just enable the request_queue limits features flag.

A note about chunk sectors for linear arrays: While it is possible to set a chunk sectors param for building a linear array, this is for specifying the granularity at which data sectors from the device are used. It is not the same as a stripe size, like for RAID0.

As such, it is not appropriate to set chunk_sectors request queue limit to the same value, as chunk_sectors request limit is a boundary for which requests cannot straddle.

However, request_queue limit max_hw_sectors is set to chunk sectors, which almost has the same effect as setting chunk_sectors limit."

At this stage with all of the other infrastructure complete, it's just a one-liner setting the atomic writes block feature flag for the md-linear code.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.