nbd.txt

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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.