Re: [PATCH RFC] xfs: set block device logical sector size on xfs_buftarg

Ric Wheeler
2013-11-14T13:10:09Z

(large snip)

On 11/14/2013 03:49 PM, Dave Chinner wrote:
>> (I'm sympathetic to pushing the envelope and dragging apps into the 21st
>> >century, but it's s double edged sword).
> Yes, it is, but if we don't take a stand and say "we, as an
> ecosystem, need to support 4k sectors*everywhere*", then we are
> going to have such problems*forever*. This isn't purely an XFS
> problem - this is something that the entire storage stack needs to
> support, from the hardware at the very bottom to the applications at
> the very top.
>
> XFS is stuck in the middle, where we cop it from both
> the hardware side ("why don't you support our hardware efficiently
> yet?") and from the application side when we do ("4k sectors break
> our assumptions!"). It's a no win situation for us no matter what we
> do, and history has shown that when we don't take a strong
> leadership position the problems don't get solved.
>
> So, let's take the initiative and make sure that everyone knows how
> to deal with these problems and get them fixed in the right places.
> I don't want to be spending the next 10 years complaining about a
> lack of 4k sector support in qemu. It's too much like the inode64
> saga over all over again.
>
> Let's face it, it wouldn't be right if XFS wasn't fighting some
> battle to drag Linux kicking and screaming into the present...
>
> Cheers,
>
> Dave.

I would agree that we should not to hit our 4K sector support, have we reached
out the the KVM/QEMU people to see if we can get them to fix this on their side?

Ric