Documentation: nfs: convert pnfs-block-server to ReST

Convert pnfs-block-server.txt to ReST and move it to admin-guide.
Content remains mostly unchanged.

Signed-off-by: Daniel W. S. Almeida <dwlsalmeida@gmail.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/c06903760e690c16d9df92f5e75f80381d6326d8.1578697871.git.dwlsalmeida@gmail.com
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>

2 files changed, 43 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/nfs/index.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/nfs/index.rst
index 8376d5225fc2..365f42a611a4 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/nfs/index.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/nfs/index.rst
@@ -10,3 +10,4 @@ NFS
     nfs-rdma
     nfsd-admin-interfaces
     nfs-idmapper
+    pnfs-block-server
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/nfs/pnfs-block-server.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/nfs/pnfs-block-server.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..b00a2e705cc4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/nfs/pnfs-block-server.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+===================================
+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
+
+.. code-block:: sh
+
+	#!/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