[dm-devel] [PATCH 17/21] libmultipath: pathinfo: don't blank wwid if checker fails

[Martin Wilck]

On Thu, 2018-10-25 at 16:50 -0500,  Benjamin Marzinski  wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 12:27:03AM +0200, Martin Wilck wrote:
> > Blanking a WWID is a dangerous operation. E.g. configure() would
> > consider the path in question as invalid and orphan it if the
> > WWID is blank. Don't do this for possibly transient checker
> > failures.
> > Moreover, we try to determine WWID even if path_offline returns
> > PATH_DOWN in the first place, so why should we not if the checker
> > has a problem?
> > 
> 
> Is PATH_WILD a transient error?  Clearly we have cases where
> PATH_UNCHECKED happens because of a transient error. What's the case
> that you are worried about where we temporarily get a PATH_WILD, but
> we
> think we should continue will setting up the path?

My mentioning of a "transient" error condition is misleading. 

But do I think that the patch is correct. In particular with the
previous changes in the series, PATH_WILD would mean that the checker
couldn't do it's job and simply has no information whether or not the
path is good. IMO it is wrong not to try to obtain a WWID, or even
blank an already retrieved WWID, in this case.

Do you disagree?

Regards,
Martin

-- 
Dr. Martin Wilck <mwilck at suse.com>, Tel. +49 (0)911 74053 2107
SUSE Linux GmbH, GF: Felix Imendörffer, Jane Smithard, Graham Norton
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