Re: [PATCH 1/9] QUEUE_FLAG_NOWAIT to indicate device supports nowait

[Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>]

On 08/09/2017 08:07 PM, Goldwyn Rodrigues wrote:
>>>>>>> No, from a multi-device point of view, this is inconsistent. I
>>>>>>> have tried the request bio returns -EAGAIN before the split, but
>>>>>>> I shall check again. Where do you see this happening?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> No, this isn't multi-device specific, any driver can do it.
>>>>>> Please see blk_queue_split.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> In that case, the bio end_io function is chained and the bio of
>>>>> the split will replicate the error to the parent (if not already
>>>>> set).
>>>>
>>>> this doesn't answer my question. So if a bio returns -EAGAIN, part
>>>> of the bio probably already dispatched to disk (if the bio is
>>>> splitted to 2 bios, one returns -EAGAIN, the other one doesn't
>>>> block and dispatch to disk), what will application be going to do?
>>>> I think this is different to other IO errors. FOr other IO errors,
>>>> application will handle the error, while we ask app to retry the
>>>> whole bio here and app doesn't know part of bio is already written
>>>> to disk.
>>>
>>> It is the same as for other I/O errors as well, such as EIO. You do
>>> not know which bio of all submitted bio's returned the error EIO.
>>> The application would and should consider the whole I/O as failed.
>>>
>>> The user application does not know of bios, or how it is going to be
>>> split in the underlying layers. It knows at the system call level.
>>> In this case, the EAGAIN will be returned to the user for the whole
>>> I/O not as a part of the I/O. It is up to application to try the I/O
>>> again with or without RWF_NOWAIT set. In direct I/O, it is bubbled
>>> out using dio->io_error. You can read about it at the patch header
>>> for the initial patchset at [1].
>>>
>>> Use case: It is for applications having two threads, a compute
>>> thread and an I/O thread. It would try to push AIO as much as
>>> possible in the compute thread using RWF_NOWAIT, and if it fails,
>>> would pass it on to I/O thread which would perform without
>>> RWF_NOWAIT. End result if done right is you save on context switches
>>> and all the synchronization/messaging machinery to perform I/O.
>>>
>>> [1] http://marc.info/?l=linux-block&m=149789003305876&w=2
>>
>> Yes, I knew the concept, but I didn't see previous patches mentioned
>> the -EAGAIN actually should be taken as a real IO error. This means a
>> lot to applications and make the API hard to use. I'm wondering if we
>> should disable bio split for NOWAIT bio, which will make the -EAGAIN
>> only mean 'try again'.
> 
> Don't take it as EAGAIN, but read it as EWOULDBLOCK. Why do you say
> the API is hard to use? Do you have a case to back it up?

Because it is hard to use, and potentially suboptimal. Let's say you're
doing a 1MB write, we hit EWOULDBLOCK for the last split. Do we return a
short write, or do we return EWOULDBLOCK? If the latter, then that
really sucks from an API point of view.

> No, not splitting the bio does not make sense here. I do not see any
> advantage in it, unless you can present a case otherwise.

It ties back into the "hard to use" that I do agree with IFF we don't
return the short write. It's hard for an application to use that
efficiently, if we write 1MB-128K but get EWOULDBLOCK, the re-write the
full 1MB from a different context.

-- 
Jens Axboe