[dm-devel] [PATCH v3 0/2] dm: dm_blk_ioctl(): implement failover for SG_IO on dm-multipath

[Mike Snitzer]

On Tue, Jun 15 2021 at  6:54P -0400,
Martin Wilck <mwilck at suse.com> wrote:

> Hi Mike,
> 
> On Mo, 2021-06-14 at 11:15 -0400, Mike Snitzer wrote:
> > 
> > This work offers a proof-of-concept but it needs further refinement
> > for sure.
> 
> Thanks for looking into it again. I need some more guidance from your
> part in order to be able to resubmit the set in a form that you
> consider ready for merging.
> 
> > The proposed open-coded SCSI code (in patch 2's drivers/md/dm-
> > scsi_ioctl.c) 
> > is well beyond what I'm willing to take in DM.
> 
> I'm not sure what code you're referring to. Is it the processing of the
> bytes of the SCSI result code? If yes, please note that I had changed
> that to open-coded form in response to Bart's review of my v2
> submission. If it's something else, please point it out to me.
> 
> To minimize the special-casing for this code path, Hannes suggested to
> use a target-specific unprepare_ioctl() callback to to tell the generic
> dm code whether a given ioctl could be retried. The logic that I've put
> into dm-scsi_ioctl.c could then be moved into the unprepare_ioctl()
> callback of dm-mpath. dm_blk_ioctl() would need to check the callback's
> return value and possibly retry the ioctl. Would hat appeal to you?
> 
> >   If this type of
> > functionality is still needed (for kvm's SCSI passthru snafu) then
> > more work is needed to negotiate proper interfaces with the SCSI
> > subsystem (added linux-scsi to cc, odd they weren't engaged on this).
> 
> Not cc'ing linux-scsi was my oversight, sorry about that. 
> 
> But I don't quite understand what interfaces you have in mind. SCSI
> needs to expose the SG_IO interface to dm, which it does; I just needed
> to export sg_io() to get access to the sg_io_hdr fields. The question
> whether a given IO can be retried is decided on the dm (-mpath) layer,
> based on blk_status_t; no additional interface on the SCSI side is
> necessary for that.
> 
> > Does it make sense to extend the SCSI device handler interface to add
> > the required enablement? (I think it'd have to if this line of work
> > is
> > to ultimately get upstream).
> 
> My current code uses the device handler indirectly for activating paths
> during priority group switching, via the dm-mpath prepare_ioctl()
> method and __pg_init_all_paths(). This is what I intended - to use
> exactly the same logic for SG_IO which is used for regular read/write
> IO on the block device. What additional functionality for the device
> handler do you have in mind?
> 
> Regards and thanks,
> Martin

I just replied to patch 2 with detailed suggestions.

Thanks,
Mike