Re: [PATCH] block: don't set GD_NEED_PART_SCAN if scan partition failed

[Ming Lei <ming.lei@redhat.com>]

On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 02:07:09PM +0100, Jan Kara wrote:
> On Wed 22-03-23 19:34:30, Ming Lei wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 10:47:07AM +0100, Jan Kara wrote:
> > > On Wed 22-03-23 15:58:35, Ming Lei wrote:
> > > > On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 11:59:26AM +0800, Yu Kuai wrote:
> > > > > From: Yu Kuai <yukuai3@huawei.com>
> > > > > 
> > > > > Currently if disk_scan_partitions() failed, GD_NEED_PART_SCAN will still
> > > > > set, and partition scan will be proceed again when blkdev_get_by_dev()
> > > > > is called. However, this will cause a problem that re-assemble partitioned
> > > > > raid device will creat partition for underlying disk.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Test procedure:
> > > > > 
> > > > > mdadm -CR /dev/md0 -l 1 -n 2 /dev/sda /dev/sdb -e 1.0
> > > > > sgdisk -n 0:0:+100MiB /dev/md0
> > > > > blockdev --rereadpt /dev/sda
> > > > > blockdev --rereadpt /dev/sdb
> > > > > mdadm -S /dev/md0
> > > > > mdadm -A /dev/md0 /dev/sda /dev/sdb
> > > > > 
> > > > > Test result: underlying disk partition and raid partition can be
> > > > > observed at the same time
> > > > > 
> > > > > Note that this can still happen in come corner cases that
> > > > > GD_NEED_PART_SCAN can be set for underlying disk while re-assemble raid
> > > > > device.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Fixes: e5cfefa97bcc ("block: fix scan partition for exclusively open device again")
> > > > > Signed-off-by: Yu Kuai <yukuai3@huawei.com>
> > > > 
> > > > The issue still can't be avoided completely, such as, after rebooting,
> > > > /dev/sda1 & /dev/md0p1 can be observed at the same time. And this one
> > > > should be underlying partitions scanned before re-assembling raid, I
> > > > guess it may not be easy to avoid.
> > > 
> > > So this was always happening (before my patches, after my patches, and now
> > > after Yu's patches) and kernel does not have enough information to know
> > > that sda will become part of md0 device in the future. But mdadm actually
> > > deals with this as far as I remember and deletes partitions for all devices
> > > it is assembling the array from (and quick tracing experiment I did
> > > supports this).
> > 
> > I am testing on Fedora 37, so mdadm v4.2 doesn't delete underlying
> > partitions before re-assemble.
> 
> Strange, I'm on openSUSE Leap 15.4 and mdadm v4.1 deletes these partitions
> (at least I can see mdadm do BLKPG_DEL_PARTITION ioctls). And checking
> mdadm sources I can see calls to remove_partitions() from start_array()
> function in Assemble.c so I'm not sure why this is not working for you...

I added dump_stack() in delete_partition() for partition 1, not observe
stack trace during booting.

> 
> > Also given mdadm or related userspace has to change for avoiding
> > to scan underlying partitions, just wondering why not let userspace
> > to tell kernel not do it explicitly?
> 
> Well, those userspace changes are long deployed, now you would introduce
> new API that needs to proliferate again. Not very nice. Also how would that
> exactly work? I mean once mdadm has underlying device open, the current
> logic makes sure we do not create partitions anymore. But there's no way
> how mdadm could possibly prevent creation of partitions for devices it
> doesn't know about yet so it still has to delete existing partitions...

I meant if mdadm has to change to delete existed partitions, why not add
one ioctl to disable partition scan for this disk when deleting
partitions/re-assemble, and re-enable scan after stopping array.

But looks it isn't so, since you mentioned that remove_partitions is
supposed to be called before starting array, however I didn't observe this
behavior.

I am worrying if the current approach may cause regression, one concern is
that ioctl(BLKRRPART) needs exclusive open now, such as:

1) mount /dev/vdb1 /mnt

2) ioctl(BLKRRPART) may fail after removing /dev/vdb3


thanks,
Ming