Re: [PATCH] blk-mq: Properly init bios from blk_mq_alloc_request_hctx()

John Garry
2022-10-25T09:15:51Z

On 25/10/2022 10:00, Ming Lei wrote:
>> My use case is in SCSI EH domain. For my HBA controller of interest, to
>> abort an erroneous IO we must send a controller proprietary abort
>> command on same HW queue as original command. So we would need to
>> allocate this abort request for a specific HW queue.
> IMO, it is one bad hw/sw interface.
>
> First such request has to be reserved, since all inflight IOs can be in error.

Right

>
> Second error handling needs to provide forward-progress, and it is supposed
> to not require external dependency, otherwise easy to cause deadlock, but
> here request from specific HW queue just depends on this queue's cpumask.
>
> Also if it has to be reserved, it can be done as one device/driver private
> command, so why bother blk-mq for this special use case?

I have a series for reserved request support, which I will send later.
Please have a look. And as I mentioned, I would prob not end up using
blk_mq_alloc_request_hctx() anyway.

>
>> I mentioned before that if no hctx->cpumask is online then we don't need
>> to allocate a request. That is because if no hctx->cpumask is online,
>> this means that original erroneous IO must be completed due to nature of
>> how blk-mq cpu hotplug handler works, i.e. drained, and then we don't
>> actually need to abort it any longer, so ok to not get a request.
> No, it is really not OK, if all cpus in hctx->cpumask are offline, you
> can't allocate
> request on the specified hw queue, then the erroneous IO can't be handled,
> then cpu hotplug handler may hang for ever.

If the erroneous IO is still in-flight from blk-mq perspective, then how
can hctx->cpumask still be offline? I thought that we guarantee that
hctx->cpumask cannot go offline until drained.

Thanks,
John