* Opt-in non-fatal data csum mismatch handling?
@ 2026-05-16 7:16 Sun YangKai
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From: Sun YangKai @ 2026-05-16 7:16 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: linux-btrfs@vger.kernel.org
Hi btrfs developers and maintainers,
Many btrfs deployments run on consumer hardware — desktop PCs, home NAS
boxes, laptops with no ECC RAM, USB-attached drives, consumer SSDs —
environments where occasional data corruption are not rare. For many of
these users, the data that fills most of the volume is also the data
they care least about per-byte: BitTorrent downloads, build caches,
browser caches, transcoded media, and so on. They would prefer "warn me
and give me the data" over "fail the read with -EIO".
Today btrfs offers two ways out: `nodatasum` (and the `chattr +C`
linkage) and `rescue=ignoredatacsums`. Both disable detection entirely,
losing the diagnostic signal users might still want. The middle option —
keep verifying, keep logging, but let the read succeed on mismatch —
isn't available short of patching the kernel.
A possible interface: a mount option (e.g. `datacsum_action=warn`) that
preserves the existing diagnostics — `btrfs_print_data_csum_error()` and
the `BTRFS_DEV_STAT_CORRUPTION_ERRS` counter — but, after all
mirror-repair attempts have failed, returns the corrupted data to the
caller instead of `-EIO`. Disk-layer EIO from below the csum check would
continue to propagate unchanged.
Before sketching a patch I wanted to ask:
1. Is the concept acceptable in principle, or is "never silently return
corrupt data" a hard line for btrfs?
2. If acceptable, is "suppress csum-fail only, never disk EIO" the right
boundary?
3. Are the existing diagnostic anchors (dev_stat counter + ratelimited
dmesg) sufficient for the "warn" half, or would you want a statx/xattr
surface as well?
Happy to send an RFC patch if the direction sounds reasonable.
Thanks,
Sun YangKai
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