This flag was added to the kernel in v6.17. As of now, only ext4 supports this flag. Signed-off-by: Pankaj Raghav --- Note: This feature was recently added to XFS and it is expected to land in v7.13. I will update this man page again once v7.13 is released. man/man2/fallocate.2 | 36 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 36 insertions(+) diff --git a/man/man2/fallocate.2 b/man/man2/fallocate.2 index ef6586c77..b39ca5c8d 100644 --- a/man/man2/fallocate.2 +++ b/man/man2/fallocate.2 @@ -244,6 +244,41 @@ SMB3 (since Linux 3.17) .IP \[bu] Btrfs (since Linux 4.16) .\" commit f27451f229966874a8793995b8e6b74326d125df +.SS Writing zeroes in file space +Specifying the +.B FALLOC_FL_WRITE_ZEROES +flag (available since Linux 6.17) +.\" commit 7bd43cc79cab3850f34da0a31d5b042b701590ef +in +.I mode +physically zeros space in the byte range starting at +.I offset +and continuing for +.I size +bytes. +Within the specified range, +blocks are allocated with written extents for +the regions that span the holes in the file. +After a successful call, +subsequent reads from this range will return zeros. +.P +This +.I mode +makes use of the unmap write zeroes functionality feature that many modern +flash-based storage offers to efficiently zero out the hole space. +This approach means that the specified range will be physically zeroed out +on the device (including partial blocks at the either end of the range). +.P +No other flags may be specified in +.I mode +in conjunction with +.BR FALLOC_FL_WRITE_ZEROES . +.P +Not all filesystems support +.BR FALLOC_FL_WRITE_ZEROES ; +if a filesystem doesn't support the operation, an error is returned. +The operation is supported only in ext4 (since Linux 6.17). +.\" commit f4265b8d32c49ff95711e6fef7d05245a2905b30 .SS Increasing file space Specifying the .B FALLOC_FL_INSERT_RANGE @@ -385,6 +420,7 @@ or is .BR FALLOC_FL_COLLAPSE_RANGE , .BR FALLOC_FL_ZERO_RANGE , +.BR FALLOC_FL_WRITE_ZEROES , or .BR FALLOC_FL_INSERT_RANGE , but the file referred to by base-commit: d926b42e0ea0406d5c2556e18205eced92d053f1 -- 2.51.2