[PATCH v6 4/5] dax: for truncate/hole-punch, do zeroing through the driver if possible

Vishal Verma
2016-05-10T18:49:15Z

In the truncate or hole-punch path in dax, we clear out sub-page ranges.
If these sub-page ranges are sector aligned and sized, we can do the
zeroing through the driver instead so that error-clearing is handled
automatically.

For sub-sector ranges, we still have to rely on clear_pmem and have the
possibility of tripping over errors.

Cc: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Cc: Ross Zwisler <ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Jeff Moyer <jmoyer@redhat.com>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Signed-off-by: Vishal Verma <vishal.l.verma@intel.com>
---
Documentation/filesystems/dax.txt | 32 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
fs/dax.c | 29 ++++++++++++++++++++++++-----
2 files changed, 56 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/dax.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/dax.txt
index 7bde640..ce4587d 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/dax.txt
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/dax.txt
@@ -79,6 +79,38 @@ These filesystems may be used for inspiration:
- ext4: the fourth extended filesystem, see Documentation/filesystems/ext4.txt

+Handling Media Errors
+---------------------
+
+The libnvdimm subsystem stores a record of known media error locations for
+each pmem block device (in gendisk->badblocks). If we fault at such location,
+or one with a latent error not yet discovered, the application can expect
+to receive a SIGBUS. Libnvdimm also allows clearing of these errors by simply
+writing the affected sectors (through the pmem driver, and if the underlying
+NVDIMM supports the clear_poison DSM defined by ACPI).
+
+Since DAX IO normally doesn't go through the driver/bio path, applications or
+sysadmins have an option to restore the lost data from a prior backup/inbuilt
+redundancy in the following ways:
+
+1. Delete the affected file, and restore from a backup (sysadmin route):
+ This will free the file system blocks that were being used by the file,
+ and the next time they're allocated, they will be zeroed first, which
+ happens through the driver, and will clear bad sectors.
+
+2. Truncate or hole-punch the part of the file that has a bad-block (at least
+ an entire aligned sector has to be hole-punched, but not necessarily an
+ entire filesystem block).
+
+These are the two basic paths that allow DAX filesystems to continue operating
+in the presence of media errors. More robust error recovery mechanisms can be
+built on top of this in the future, for example, involving redundancy/mirroring
+provided at the block layer through DM, or additionally, at the filesystem
+level. These would have to rely on the above two tenets, that error clearing
+can happen either by sending an IO through the driver, or zeroing (also through
+the driver).
+
+
Shortcomings
------------

diff --git a/fs/dax.c b/fs/dax.c
index 5948d9b..0167cde 100644
--- a/fs/dax.c
+++ b/fs/dax.c
@@ -1196,6 +1196,20 @@ out:
}
EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(dax_pfn_mkwrite);

+static bool dax_range_is_aligned(struct block_device *bdev,
+ struct blk_dax_ctl *dax, unsigned int offset,
+ unsigned int length)
+{
+ unsigned short sector_size = bdev_logical_block_size(bdev);
+
+ if (!IS_ALIGNED(((u64)dax->addr + offset), sector_size))
+ return false;
+ if (!IS_ALIGNED(length, sector_size))
+ return false;
+
+ return true;
+}
+
/**
* dax_zero_page_range - zero a range within a page of a DAX file
* @inode: The file being truncated
@@ -1240,11 +1254,16 @@ int dax_zero_page_range(struct inode *inode, loff_t from, unsigned length,
.size = PAGE_SIZE,
};

- if (dax_map_atomic(bdev, &dax) < 0)
- return PTR_ERR(dax.addr);
- clear_pmem(dax.addr + offset, length);
- wmb_pmem();
- dax_unmap_atomic(bdev, &dax);
+ if (dax_range_is_aligned(bdev, &dax, offset, length))
+ return blkdev_issue_zeroout(bdev, dax.sector,
+ length >> 9, GFP_NOFS, true);
+ else {
+ if (dax_map_atomic(bdev, &dax) < 0)
+ return PTR_ERR(dax.addr);
+ clear_pmem(dax.addr + offset, length);
+ wmb_pmem();
+ dax_unmap_atomic(bdev, &dax);
+ }
}

return 0;