1 files changed, 37 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/pnfs-block-server.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/pnfs-block-server.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..2143673cf154
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/pnfs-block-server.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+pNFS block layout server user guide
+
+The Linux NFS server now supports the pNFS block layout extension.  In this
+case the NFS server acts as Metadata Server (MDS) for pNFS, which in addition
+to handling all the metadata access to the NFS export also hands out layouts
+to the clients to directly access the underlying block devices that are
+shared with the client.
+
+To use pNFS block layouts with with the Linux NFS server the exported file
+system needs to support the pNFS block layouts (currently just XFS), and the
+file system must sit on shared storage (typically iSCSI) that is accessible
+to the clients in addition to the MDS.  As of now the file system needs to
+sit directly on the exported volume, striping or concatenation of
+volumes on the MDS and clients is not supported yet.
+
+On the server, pNFS block volume support is automatically if the file system
+support it.  On the client make sure the kernel has the CONFIG_PNFS_BLOCK
+option enabled, the blkmapd daemon from nfs-utils is running, and the
+file system is mounted using the NFSv4.1 protocol version (mount -o vers=4.1).
+
+If the nfsd server needs to fence a non-responding client it calls
+/sbin/nfsd-recall-failed with the first argument set to the IP address of
+the client, and the second argument set to the device node without the /dev
+prefix for the file system to be fenced. Below is an example file that shows
+how to translate the device into a serial number from SCSI EVPD 0x80:
+
+cat > /sbin/nfsd-recall-failed << EOF
+#!/bin/sh
+
+CLIENT="$1"
+DEV="/dev/$2"
+EVPD=`sg_inq --page=0x80 ${DEV} | \
+	grep "Unit serial number:" | \
+	awk -F ': ' '{print $2}'`
+
+echo "fencing client ${CLIENT} serial ${EVPD}" >> /var/log/pnfsd-fence.log
+EOF