[linux-lvm] Identifying useable block devices

[Peter Rajnoha]

On 01/20/2014 12:49 PM, Peter Rajnoha wrote:
> On 01/17/2014 11:02 AM, Marius Vollmer wrote:
>> [ I am not subscribed, so please keep me in CC.  I'll just reply to
>>   myself, sorry for breaking the threading.
>> ]
>>
>> Peter Rajnoha wrote:
>>
>>> For now, these flags are only documented directly in libdevmapper.h
>>> (as they were only meant to direct udev rules and these situations
>>> were all audited directly by communicating with other teams).  I could
>>> probably add a few lines to the man page directly though as others
>>> could use this even when reading udev database...
>>
>> That would be great!
>>
>>> However, for your purpose, I'd better use
>>> DM_UDEV_DISABLE_OTHER_RULES_FLAG which just tells that everything else
>>> other than DM/LVM related should skip this device.
>>
>> Hmm, DM_UDEV_DISABLE_OTHER_RULES_FLAG is (now) set for thin volumes, as
>> far as I can tell.  This is what lead me down this rabbit hole in the
>> first place: UDisks2 _does_ ignore events for nodes with
>> DM_UDEV_DISABLE_OTHER_RULES_FLAG set, and since Fedora 20, this causes
>> it to ignore thin volumes.
>>
>> The use of DM_UDEV_DISABLE_OTHER_RULES_FLAG or any other such flag in
>> UDisks2 looked like a ugly hack to me, so I started looking for
>> alternatives.
>>
>> The best option seemed to be to ignore any DISABLE flag in UDisks, and
>> to set UDISKS_IGNORE for LVM2 block devices that do not have the
>> /dev/VG/LV symlink.
>>
>> Now you say that DM_UDEV_DISABLE_OTHER_RULES_FLAG is actually the Right
>> Way, but it seems to be buggy re thin volumes.  Correct?
>>
> 
> Thing here is that when LVs are created then at first they have this flag
> set until proper initialization is finished - meaning zeroing of any existing
> signatures found on the volume before this LV can be used cleanly (otherwise,
> it could happen that some scanning done outside LVM could find stale metadata
> on just created LV, like FS labels, MD signatures.. whatever that might pose
> a confusion about what is layed on top of the LV). Only after the signature
> wiping is done, the flag is dropped and so others are free to use it as the
> LV is clean now.
> 
> However, you're right that in case of thin LVs, this is set incorrectly.
> The DM_UDEV_DISABLE_OTHER_RULES flag should not be there. I've fixed that:

...the flag would be gone if you opened the LV for read-write and then
close it - you don't even need to write anything to the LV, just open
and close - this would fire an event that would have dropped the flag.
It was (incorrectly) supposed to be the LVM itself that would open the
new thin LV for signature wiping - that would be exactly the "open for
RW"/"close" sequence that would have dropped the flag.
Though in this exact case the wiping is not done - the thin LV is an
exception here and the code handled this incorrectly...

-- 
Peter