What is this dm-0 device?

While poking around trying to figure out why a Linux -> Linux file transfer is running slower than I think it should, I stumbled across something I'm not familiar with. /dev/dm-0 seems to be my bottleneck, but I have no idea what it is.

On my destination server, the iostat command shows a device at the bottom, /dev/dm-0, as being 100% utilized. This server has 6 disks in a mdadm raid5 set, with LVM running on top of it. Each of the underlying disks are sitting around 50% util. The transfer is writing to a logical volume located on this raidset.

What is this /dev/dm-0 thing? Once I know what it is, maybe I can find how to increase its speed, or at least understand why its the speed that it is.

Solution 1:

It's part of the device mapper in the kernel, used by LVM. Use dmsetup ls to see what is behind it.

Solution 2:

Those are LVM logical "devices"

You can map them using:

# sudo lvdisplay|awk  '/LV Name/{n=$3} /Block device/{d=$3; sub(".*:","dm-",d); print d,n;}'
dm-0 /dev/SysVolGroup/LogVolRoot
dm-1 /dev/SysVolGroup/xen
dm-2 /dev/SysVolGroup/db1-2
dm-3 /dev/SysVolGroup/db1-2swap
dm-4 /dev/SysVolGroup/python1
dm-5 /dev/SysVolGroup/python1swap
dm-6 /dev/SysVolGroup/db1-2snap

source: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/dm0-in-iostat-652771/

Solution 3:

As usual under a Linux system, there should be many ways to get the same result. If you've been given a non root user, I advise you to use lsblk command (e.g. list block devices) which will build a tree view of disks dependencies:

[oracle@abcdlinux ~]$ lsblk
NAME                               MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINT
sda                                  8:0    0  300G  0 disk
└─RATGORA1DSY_PJSTORE_1 (dm-4)     253:4    0  300G  0 mpath
  └─RATGORA1DSY_PJSTORE_1p1 (dm-5) 253:5    0  300G  0 part  /oradata
sdb                                  8:16   0  100G  0 disk
└─Boot-RATGORA1DSY (dm-0)          253:0    0  100G  0 mpath
  ├─Boot-RATGORA1DSYp1 (dm-1)      253:1    0  100M  0 part  /boot
  ├─Boot-RATGORA1DSYp2 (dm-2)      253:2    0   16G  0 part  [SWAP]
  └─Boot-RATGORA1DSYp3 (dm-3)      253:3    0 83.9G  0 part  /
sdc                                  8:32   0  300G  0 disk
└─RATGORA1DSY_PJSTORE_1 (dm-4)     253:4    0  300G  0 mpath
  └─RATGORA1DSY_PJSTORE_1p1 (dm-5) 253:5    0  300G  0 part  /oradata
sdd                                  8:48   0  100G  0 disk
└─Boot-RATGORA1DSY (dm-0)          253:0    0  100G  0 mpath
  ├─Boot-RATGORA1DSYp1 (dm-1)      253:1    0  100M  0 part  /boot
  ├─Boot-RATGORA1DSYp2 (dm-2)      253:2    0   16G  0 part  [SWAP]
  └─Boot-RATGORA1DSYp3 (dm-3)      253:3    0 83.9G  0 part  /