[dm-devel] [PATCH 1/4] brd: handle misaligned discard

[Mikulas Patocka]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2016, Bart Van Assche wrote:

> On 10/28/2016 04:39 AM, Mikulas Patocka wrote:
> > On Wed, 26 Oct 2016, Bart Van Assche wrote:
> > > On 10/26/2016 02:46 PM, Mikulas Patocka wrote:
> > > > I think the proper thing would be to move "discard_zeroes_data" flag
> > > > into
> > > > the bio itself - there would be REQ_OP_DISCARD and REQ_OP_DISCARD_ZERO -
> > > > and if the device doesn't support REQ_OP_DISCARD_ZERO, it rejects the
> > > > bio
> > > > and the caller is supposed to do zeroing manually.
> > > 
> > > Sorry but I don't like this proposal. I think that a much better solution
> > > would be to pause I/O before making any changes to the discard_zeroes_data
> > > flag.
> > 
> > The device mapper pauses all bios when it switches the table - but the bio
> > was submitted with assumption that it goes to a device withe
> > "discard_zeroes_data" set, then the bio is paused, device mapper table is
> > switched, the bio is unpaused, and now it can go to a device without
> > "discard_zeroes_data".
> 
> Hello Mikulas,
> 
> Sorry if I wasn't clear enough. What I meant is to wait until all outstanding
> requests have finished

It is possible that the process sends never ending stream of bios (for 
example when reading linear data and using readahead), so waiting until 
there are no oustanding bios never finishes.

> before modifying the discard_zeroes_data flag - the
> kind of operation that is performed by e.g. blk_mq_freeze_queue().

blk_mq_freeze_queue() works on request-based drivers, device mapper works 
with bios, so that function has no effect on device mapper device. Anyway 
- blk_mq_freeze_queue() won't stop the process that issues the I/O 
requests - it will just hold the requests in the queue and not forward 
them to the device.

There is no way to stop the process that issues the bios. We can't stop 
the process that is looping in __blkdev_issue_discard, issuing discard 
requests. All that we can do is to hold the bios that the process issued.

Device mapper can freeze the filesystem with "freeze_bdev", but...
- some filesystems don't support freeze
- if the filesystem is not directly mounted on the frozen device, but 
there is a stack of intermediate block devices between the filesystem and 
the frozen device, then the filesystem will not be frozen
- the user can open the block device directly and he won't be affected by 
the freeze

> Modifying the discard_zeroes_data flag after a bio has been submitted 
> and before it has completed could lead to several classes of subtle 
> bugs. Functions like __blkdev_issue_discard() assume that the value of 
> the discard_zeroes_data flag does not change after this function has 
> been called and before the submitted requests completed.
>
> Bart.

I agree. That's the topic of the discussion - that the discard_zeroes_data 
flag is unreliable and the flag should be moved to the bio.

Mikulas