mdadm: Add --write-zeros option for Create

Add the --write-zeros option for Create which will send a write zeros
request to all the disks before assembling the array. After zeroing
the array, the disks will be in a known clean state and the initial
sync may be skipped.

Writing zeroes is best used when there is a hardware offload method
to zero the data. But even still, zeroing can take several minutes on
a large device. Because of this, all disks are zeroed in parallel using
their own forked process and a message is printed to the user. The main
process will proceed only after all the zeroing processes have completed
successfully.

Signed-off-by: Logan Gunthorpe <logang@deltatee.com>
Acked-by: Kinga Tanska <kinga.tanska@linux.intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Xiao Ni <xni@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Chaitanya Kulkarni <kch@nvidia.com>
Acked-by: Coly Li <colyli@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Jes Sorensen <jes@trained-monkey.org>

1 files changed, 2 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/ReadMe.c b/ReadMe.c
index bd8d50d..db251ed 100644
--- a/ReadMe.c
+++ b/ReadMe.c
@@ -138,6 +138,7 @@ struct option long_options[] = {
     {"size",	  1, 0, 'z'},
     {"auto",	  1, 0, Auto}, /* also for --assemble */
     {"assume-clean",0,0, AssumeClean },
+    {"write-zeroes",0,0, WriteZeroes },
     {"metadata",  1, 0, 'e'}, /* superblock format */
     {"bitmap",	  1, 0, Bitmap},
     {"bitmap-chunk", 1, 0, BitmapChunk},
@@ -390,6 +391,7 @@ char Help_create[] =
 "  --write-journal=      : Specify journal device for RAID-4/5/6 array\n"
 "  --consistency-policy= : Specify the policy that determines how the array\n"
 "                     -k : maintains consistency in case of unexpected shutdown.\n"
+"  --write-zeroes        : Write zeroes to the disks before creating. This will bypass initial sync.\n"
 "\n"
 ;