Re: [PATCH v6 1/4] libata: Safely overwrite attached page in WRITE SAME xlat

Shaun Tancheff
2016-08-25T07:19:20Z

On Thu, Aug 25, 2016 at 1:31 AM, Tom Yan <tom.ty89@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 25 August 2016 at 05:28, Shaun Tancheff <shaun.tancheff@seagate.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 12:31 AM, Tom Yan <tom.ty89@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 24 August 2016 at 11:33, Martin K. Petersen
>>> <martin.petersen@oracle.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Yan <tom.ty89@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>> Tom> Nope, SCSI Write Same commands does not have payload (or in SCSI
>>>> Tom> terms, parameter list / data-out buffer).
>>>>
>>>> WRITE SAME has a a payload of 1 logical block (unless NDOB is set but we
>>>> have had no good reason to support that yet).
>>>
>>> Interesting, I wasn't aware of the bit. I just didn't see any
>>> parameter list defined for any of the Write Same commands. Ah wait, it
>>> carries the pattern (the "same") and so.
>>>
>>> Hmm, it doesn't seem like the translation implemented in this patch
>>> series cares about the payload though?
>>
>> As repeated here and elsewhere the payload is:
>> scsi_sglist(cmd)
>> and it was put there by scsi_init_io() when it called scsi_init_sgtable()
>
> What I mean is:
>
> put_unaligned_le32(0u, &sctpg[10]);
>
> So even if the payload of the SCSI Write Same commands instruct a
> non-zero pattern writing, SCT Write Same will conveniently ignore that
> do zero-filling anyway. That's what I mean by "doesn't care about the
> payload".

If you would like to add support for that it would be nice. I am not
planning to do so here.

> Though that would only be case with SG_IO though. SCSI Write Same
> issued from block layer (BLKZEROOUT) will be instructing zero-filling
> anyway.

>>>> UNMAP has a payload that varies based on the number of range
>>>> descriptors. The SCSI disk driver only ever issues a single descriptor
>>>> but since libata doesn't support UNMAP this doesn't really come into
>>>> play.
>>>>
>>>> Ideally there would be a way to distinguish between device limits for
>>>> WRITE SAME with the UNMAP bit and for "regular" WRITE SAME. One way to
>>>> do that would be to transition the libata discard implementation over to
>>>> single-range UNMAP, fill out the relevant VPD page B0 fields and leave
>>>> the WRITE SAME bits for writing zeroes.
>>>>
>>>> One reason that has not been particularly compelling is that the WRITE
>>>> SAME payload buffer does double duty to hold the ATA DSM TRIM range
>>>
>>> Huh? Why would the SATL care about its payload buffer for TRIM (i.e.
>>> when the UNMAP bit is set)? Doesn't it just read the LBA and NUMBER OF
>>> BLOCKS field and pack TRIM ranges/payload according to that?
>>>
>>>> descriptors and matches the required ATA payload size. Whereas the UNMAP
>>>
>>> Why would it need to "matches the required ATA payload size"?
>>>
>>>> command would only provide 24 bytes of TRIM range space.
>>>
>>> I don't really follow. The UNMAP descriptor has LBA (8 bytes / 64-bit)
>>> and NUMBER OF BLOCKS (4 bytes / 32-bit) field of the same length as
>>> Write Same (16). Even if the SCSI disk driver will only send one
>>> descriptor, it should work as good as Write Same (16).
>>
>> The "payload" is the data block transferred with the command.
>> The "descriptor" is, in this context, the contents of the payload as
>> it "describes" what the action the command is supposed to perform.
>>
>
> I know right.
>
>> The "payload" contains the "descriptor" that "describes" how
>> DSM TRIM should determine which logical blocks it should UNMAP.
>
> This should only be the case of UNMAP command, but not SCSI Write Same
> with UNMAP bit set. And either way it should not affect how large the
> ATA TRIM payload can be.

The current SATL does not report support for UNMAP.
If you think it should be added please submit a patch.

If you would like to extend the current translate to support sending
multiple blocks of trim data please submit a patch.

>>>> Also, please be careful with transfer lengths, __data_len, etc. As
>>>> mentioned, the transfer length WRITE SAME is typically 512 bytes and
>>>> that's the number of bytes that need to be DMA'ed and transferred over
>>>> the wire by the controller. But from a command completion perspective we
>>>> need to complete however many bytes the command acted upon. Unlike reads
>>>> and writes there is not a 1:1 mapping between the transfer length and
>>>> the affected area. So we do a bit of magic after the buffer has been
>>>> mapped to ensure that the completion byte count matches the number of
>>>> blocks that were affected by the command rather than the size of the
>>>> data buffer in bytes.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Martin K. Petersen Oracle Linux Engineering
>> --
>> Shaun Tancheff
--
Shaun Tancheff