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From: Alfonso Kuen <gerencia@idkmanager.com>
To: hch@lst.de, sagi@grimberg.me, kch@nvidia.com
Cc: linux-nvme@lists.infradead.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	Alfonso Kuen <gerencia@idkmanager.com>
Subject: [PATCH v3] nvmet-tcp: report a bounded MDTS instead of "no limit"
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2026 19:51:16 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260831005117.142713-1-gerencia@idkmanager.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20260829013900.10392-1-gerencia@idkmanager.com>

nvmet-tcp does not implement .get_mdts, so nvmet_ctrl_mdts() falls back
to the port value (0 by default) and identify-controller advertises "no
maximum data transfer size". The initiator believes it:
nvme_init_ctrl_finish() sets max_hw_sectors to UINT_MAX.

What the initiator then issues is decided by the block layer. The
generic cap is 4 MiB (BLK_DEF_MAX_SECTORS_CAP), but a namespace that
advertises a large NOWS raises it: blk_validate_limits() takes
max_sectors from io_opt once io_opt exceeds that cap. On the array we
measured, NOWS is 65535, so io_opt is 32 MiB and the initiator emitted
32 MiB commands -- from a controller that advertised no MDTS at all.

The target cannot serve those, in one of two ways depending on the
kernel.

Since commit 4a3f00262a04 ("nvmet-tcp: bound SGL data length before
allocating command buffers"), nvmet_tcp_map_data() rejects any len above
NVMET_TCP_MAXH2CDATA (4 MiB) with NVME_SC_SGL_INVALID_DATA | DNR, so the
command fails hard and deterministically. That is the right response to
an oversized command, but the initiator had no way to avoid sending it:
nothing advertised the limit it was exceeding.

Before that commit the command reached sgl_alloc(), which for 32 MiB
needs 8192 scatterlist entries -- 256 KiB, an order-6 kmalloc. Under
fragmentation that fails, and it surfaces as NVME_SC_INTERNAL, a generic
status, so NVMe multipath does not fail the command over to another
path. A 1 MiB command needs 256 entries, 8 KiB, served from the
kmalloc-8k slab, which does not fail. That failure mode is intermittent
and load-dependent rather than deterministic; on a vendor kernel
predating the bound it cost us roughly 98 GiB of a 2 TiB image copy,
with the copy tool exiting 0.

Commit ec6d20e16c2d ("nvmet-rdma: Implement get_mdts controller op")
left the other transports untouched. Do the same for TCP, using the
same 1 MiB value, so initiators size their commands to something the
target accepts instead of discovering the limit by failing.

Signed-off-by: Alfonso Kuen <gerencia@idkmanager.com>
Reviewed-by: Sagi Grimberg <sagi@grimberg.me>
---
Changes in v3:
- Cite the RDMA change as commit ec6d20e16c2d ("nvmet-rdma: Implement
  get_mdts controller op") rather than by patch title, per Sagi's review.
- Pick up Sagi's Reviewed-by.
- No functional change: the diff is byte-identical to v1 and v2.

Changes in v2:
- Rewrite the rationale. v1 described the sgl_alloc() order-6 failure as
  current behaviour; since 4a3f00262a04 that path is unreachable and an
  oversized command is rejected earlier with SGL_INVALID_DATA | DNR. Both
  failure modes are now described, and which kernels see which.
- v1 attributed the 32 MiB command size to a "generic 32 MiB ceiling" in
  the block layer. The generic cap is 4 MiB; the 32 MiB came from the
  target's own NOWS raising io_opt. Corrected -- and it sharpens the
  point, since the same controller advertises an optimal I/O size it
  cannot serve.
- v1 called the 1 MiB SGL an order-0 allocation; it is 8 KiB.
- No functional change: the diff is byte-identical to v1.

 drivers/nvme/target/tcp.c | 9 +++++++++
 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+)

diff --git a/drivers/nvme/target/tcp.c b/drivers/nvme/target/tcp.c
index e4f603b2a..414ba896e 100644
--- a/drivers/nvme/target/tcp.c
+++ b/drivers/nvme/target/tcp.c
@@ -23,6 +23,9 @@
 #include "nvmet.h"
 
 #define NVMET_TCP_DEF_INLINE_DATA_SIZE	(4 * PAGE_SIZE)
+
+/* Assume mpsmin == device_page_size == 4KB */
+#define NVMET_TCP_MAX_MDTS		8
 #define NVMET_TCP_MAXH2CDATA		0x400000 /* 16M arbitrary limit */
 #define NVMET_TCP_BACKLOG 128
 
@@ -2243,6 +2246,11 @@ static ssize_t nvmet_tcp_host_port_addr(struct nvmet_ctrl *ctrl,
 			(struct sockaddr *)&queue->sockaddr_peer);
 }
 
+static u8 nvmet_tcp_get_mdts(const struct nvmet_ctrl *ctrl)
+{
+	return NVMET_TCP_MAX_MDTS;
+}
+
 static const struct nvmet_fabrics_ops nvmet_tcp_ops = {
 	.owner			= THIS_MODULE,
 	.type			= NVMF_TRTYPE_TCP,
@@ -2254,6 +2262,7 @@ static const struct nvmet_fabrics_ops nvmet_tcp_ops = {
 	.install_queue		= nvmet_tcp_install_queue,
 	.disc_traddr		= nvmet_tcp_disc_port_addr,
 	.host_traddr		= nvmet_tcp_host_port_addr,
+	.get_mdts		= nvmet_tcp_get_mdts,
 };
 
 static int __init nvmet_tcp_init(void)
-- 
2.47.3



  parent reply	other threads:[~2026-08-31  0:51 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 9+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
     [not found] <20260828222356.1264-1-gerencia@idkmanager.com>
2026-08-29  1:39 ` [PATCH v2] nvmet-tcp: report a bounded MDTS instead of "no limit" Alfonso Kuen
2026-08-30 21:00   ` Sagi Grimberg
2026-08-30 21:02     ` Sagi Grimberg
2026-08-31  0:51   ` Alfonso Kuen [this message]
2026-09-01 14:06     ` [PATCH v3] " Maurizio Lombardi
2026-09-19  3:00       ` Ing. Alfonso Kuen Arroyo
2026-09-19  7:53         ` Maurizio Lombardi
2026-09-19  7:57           ` Maurizio Lombardi
2026-09-19 14:39             ` Ing. Alfonso Kuen Arroyo

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