Linux 6.11 Adds Support For Rust-Based Block Drivers & Atomic Writes

Jens Axboe has seen all of the block subsystem and IO_uring changes already mainlined for the in-development Linux 6.11 kernel.

As previously covered on Phoronix, the block changes for Linux 6.11 introduce the notion of atomic writes for block devices and have been wired up for both SCSI and NVMe storage. Separately there are also XFS file-system patches so far for making use of atomic writes.

Also notable with the block updates for Linux 6.11 is having basic support now for block drivers written in the Rust programming language. The necessary abstractions and kernel integration is in place to enable Rust-based block drivers. For the moment just a Rust "null_blk" block driver has been written for demonstration purposes and to exercise the interfaces.

Other block work for Linux 6.11 includes enhancing the NVMe support to include target DebugFS support, PCIe subsystem reset enhancements, queue-depth multi-path policy handling, authentication error fixes, and device initialization memory leak fixes.

The block pull request also has block integrity improvements, IO priority information now within block trace points, and other fixes.

The IO_uring merge for Linux 6.11 meanwhile brings minor improvements and clean-ups/fixes.