Re: [RFC] libata new EH document

Tejun Heo
2005-09-01T05:44:00Z

Hello, Luben.

Luben Tuikov wrote:
> --- Tejun Heo <htejun@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> As implementing autosensing will probably need rewriting failed qc
>>for REQUEST SENSE command, I'm opposing it. My proposal is to do the
>>following, which, in effect, should be equivalent to autosensing.
>>
>> 1. ATAPI CHECK SENSE occurs
>> 2. libata fails the command
>> 3. SCSI sees failure code but no sense data, SCSI EH invoked
>> 4. libata EH invoked
>> 5. REQUEST SENSE
>> 6. sense data acquired
>> 7. scsi_decide_disposition() called (this needs to be exported from SCSI)
>> 8. libata handles the failed qc according to the verdict.
>
>
> Hmm, yes. It sounds good, except can you make it so that step 3
> doesn't exist, ever. This means that you would _reduce_ the
> double "bouncing" between eh's _and_ implement autosense.
>

libata EH is invoked from SCSI EH via hostt->eh_strategy_handler(), so
they're one - libata EH uses SCSH EH framework to operate. I'm having
hard time understanding what you mean by 'double bounncing'.

> SCSI Core should never know what happened. I.e. if the command
> has completed with CHECK SENSE, sense data _is_ present => "autosense".
>
>
>>This is very similar to what SCSI EH currently does for commands
>>without sense data.
>
>
> Yes, you're right -- it is very similar to what SCSI EH currently does.
> Unfortunately it isn't quite correct.
>

Can you please elaborate why getting sense data from EH is bad idea
for ATAPI? For more advanced SCSI transports, I agree with you that
autosensing is necessary with queueing and multiple initiator and etc,
but I don't really see how requesting sense from EH would be bad for ATAPI.

>
>> As ATAPI device's queue depth is always one (ignoring SERVICE cruft
>>everyone seems to hate), I don't think there will be any noticeable
>>performance penalty as James was describing in the other mail in this
>>thread.
>
>
> What you can do is keep a qc around to request sense immediately
> afterwards. If _that_ qc fails, then you know you need the big hammer.

Yes, that is also a possibility, but I was opting for REQUEST SENSE
from EH for the following two reasons.

a. As we're gonna have facilities to issue EH cmds from EH, ATAPI can
just join the crowd without implementing separate mechanism to issue
REQUEST SENSE.

b. It's not a hot path and I think performance gain from implementing
autosense would be negligible.

Thanks.

--
tejun