[dm-devel] NULL pointer due to malformed bcache bio

[Kent Overstreet]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 04:54:40PM -0400, Mike Snitzer wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> So DM core clearly needs to be more defensive about the possibility for
> a NULL return from bio_alloc_bioset() given I'm hitting a NULL pointer
> in DM's alloc_tio() because nr_iovecs=512.  bio_alloc_bioset()'s call to
> bvec_alloc() only supports nr_iovecs up to BIO_MAX_PAGES (256).
> 
> Seems bcache should be using bio_get_nr_vecs() or something else?
> 
> But by using a bcache bucket size of 2MB, with the bcache staged in
> Jens' for-next, I've caused bcache to issue bios with nr_iovecs=512:

Argh. Why is dm using bi_max_vecs instead of bi_vcnt? I could hack
around this in bcache but I think dm is doing the wrong thing here.

Unless I've missed something in my testing (and bcache's BIO_MAX_PAGES
check isn't quite right, actually) bcache _is_ splitting its bios
whenever bio_segments(bio) > BIO_MAX_PAGES, it's only bi_max_vecs that's
potentially > BIO_MAX_PAGES.