[dm-devel] [PATCH v2] block: disallow changing max_sectors_kb on a request stacking device

[Martin K. Petersen]

>>>>> "Mike" == Mike Snitzer <snitzer at redhat.com> writes:

Mike,

>> However, doesn't it make more sense to tweak limits on DM device
>> instead of the underlying ones? It seems a bit counter-intuitive to
>> me to change max_sectors_kb on a different device than the one where
>> the filesystem whose max I/O size you want to change is located.

Mike> As you know, the limits are stacked from the bottom-up.

Yep, but since max_sectors_kb is a performance tunable and not something
enforced by the hardware, maybe we should consider treating it
differently?

Mike> As the commit header from this thread mentioned, what I've arrived
Mike> at is to have multipathd establish a desired max_sectors_kb (if
Mike> configured to do so in multipath.conf) on the underlying paths
Mike> _before_ the multipath device is created.  Yet to check with Ben
Mike> Marzinski or others but it seems like a reasonable feature (and
Mike> really the cleaniset way to deal with this issue IMHO.. no need
Mike> for lots of kernel code changes for something so niche).

That's fine. Another option would be to use the max_dev_sectors queue
limit to contain the minimum max_sectors from below. It was really only
envisioned as a LLD limit but it may be useful in this case.
queue_max_sectors_store() already enforces it.

-- 
Martin K. Petersen	Oracle Linux Engineering