- Most attention this cycle went to optimizing blk-mq request-based DM

(dm-mq) that is used exclussively by DM multipath.
 
   - A stable fix for dm-mq that eliminates excessive context switching
     offers the biggest performance improvement (for both IOPs and
     throughput).
 
   - But more work is needed, during the next cycle, to reduce spinlock
     contention in DM multipath on large NUMA systems.
 
 - A stable fix for a NULL pointer seen when DM stats is enabled on a DM
   multipath device that must requeue an IO due to path failure.
 
 - A stable fix for DM snapshot to disallow the COW and origin devices
   from being identical.  This amounts to graceful failure in the face of
   userspace error because these devices shouldn't ever be identical.
 
 - Stable fixes for DM cache and DM thin provisioning to address crashes
   seen if/when their respective metadata device experiences failures
   that cause the transition to 'fail_io' mode.
 
 - The DM cache 'mq' policy is now an alias for the 'smq' policy.  The
   'smq' policy proved to be consistently better than 'mq'.  As such
   'mq', with all its complex user-facing tunables, has been eliminated.
 
 - Improve DM thin provisioning to consistently return -ENOSPC once the
   thin-pool's data volume is out of space.
 
 - Improve DM core to properly handle error propagation if
   bio_integrity_clone() fails in clone_bio().
 
 - Other small cleanups and improvements to DM core.
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Merge tag 'dm-4.6-changes' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/device-mapper/linux-dm

Pull device mapper updates from Mike Snitzer:

 - Most attention this cycle went to optimizing blk-mq request-based DM
   (dm-mq) that is used exclussively by DM multipath:

     - A stable fix for dm-mq that eliminates excessive context
       switching offers the biggest performance improvement (for both
       IOPs and throughput).

     - But more work is needed, during the next cycle, to reduce
       spinlock contention in DM multipath on large NUMA systems.

 - A stable fix for a NULL pointer seen when DM stats is enabled on a DM
   multipath device that must requeue an IO due to path failure.

 - A stable fix for DM snapshot to disallow the COW and origin devices
   from being identical.  This amounts to graceful failure in the face
   of userspace error because these devices shouldn't ever be identical.

 - Stable fixes for DM cache and DM thin provisioning to address crashes
   seen if/when their respective metadata device experiences failures
   that cause the transition to 'fail_io' mode.

 - The DM cache 'mq' policy is now an alias for the 'smq' policy.  The
   'smq' policy proved to be consistently better than 'mq'.  As such
   'mq', with all its complex user-facing tunables, has been eliminated.

 - Improve DM thin provisioning to consistently return -ENOSPC once the
   thin-pool's data volume is out of space.

 - Improve DM core to properly handle error propagation if
   bio_integrity_clone() fails in clone_bio().

 - Other small cleanups and improvements to DM core.

* tag 'dm-4.6-changes' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/device-mapper/linux-dm: (41 commits)
  dm: fix rq_end_stats() NULL pointer in dm_requeue_original_request()
  dm thin: consistently return -ENOSPC if pool has run out of data space
  dm cache: bump the target version
  dm cache: make sure every metadata function checks fail_io
  dm: add missing newline between DM_DEBUG_BLOCK_STACK_TRACING and DM_BUFIO
  dm cache policy smq: clarify that mq registration failure was for 'mq'
  dm: return error if bio_integrity_clone() fails in clone_bio()
  dm thin metadata: don't issue prefetches if a transaction abort has failed
  dm snapshot: disallow the COW and origin devices from being identical
  dm cache: make the 'mq' policy an alias for 'smq'
  dm: drop unnecessary assignment of md->queue
  dm: reorder 'struct mapped_device' members to fix alignment and holes
  dm: remove dummy definition of 'struct dm_table'
  dm: add 'dm_numa_node' module parameter
  dm thin metadata: remove needless newline from subtree_dec() DMERR message
  dm mpath: cleanup reinstate_path() et al based on code review
  dm mpath: remove __pgpath_busy forward declaration, rename to pgpath_busy
  dm mpath: switch from 'unsigned' to 'bool' for flags where appropriate
  dm round robin: use percpu 'repeat_count' and 'current_path'
  dm path selector: remove 'repeat_count' return from .select_path hook
  ...

include/linux/device-mapper.h

@@ -124,6 +124,8 @@ struct dm_dev {
 	char name[16];
 };
 
+dev_t dm_get_dev_t(const char *path);
+
 /*
  * Constructors should call these functions to ensure destination devices
  * are opened/closed correctly.
@@ -189,6 +191,13 @@ struct target_type {
 #define DM_TARGET_IMMUTABLE		0x00000004
 #define dm_target_is_immutable(type)	((type)->features & DM_TARGET_IMMUTABLE)
 
+/*
+ * Indicates that a target may replace any target; even immutable targets.
+ * .map, .map_rq, .clone_and_map_rq and .release_clone_rq are all defined.
+ */
+#define DM_TARGET_WILDCARD		0x00000008
+#define dm_target_is_wildcard(type)	((type)->features & DM_TARGET_WILDCARD)
+
 /*
  * Some targets need to be sent the same WRITE bio severals times so
  * that they can send copies of it to different devices.  This function
@@ -231,10 +240,10 @@ struct dm_target {
 	unsigned num_write_same_bios;
 
 	/*
-	 * The minimum number of extra bytes allocated in each bio for the
-	 * target to use.  dm_per_bio_data returns the data location.
+	 * The minimum number of extra bytes allocated in each io for the
+	 * target to use.
 	 */
-	unsigned per_bio_data_size;
+	unsigned per_io_data_size;
 
 	/*
 	 * If defined, this function is called to find out how many