Re: [PATCH 11/21] xfs: repair the rmapbt

["Darrick J. Wong" <darrick.wong@oracle.com>]

On Wed, Jul 04, 2018 at 10:44:38AM +0200, Carlos Maiolino wrote:
> > [some of this Dave and I discussed on IRC, so I'll summarize for
> > everyone else here...]
> > 
> > For this initial v0 iteration of the rmap repair code, yes, we have to
> > freeze the fs and iterate everything.  However, unless your computer and
> > storage are particularly untrustworthy, rmapbt reconstruction should be
> > a very infrequent thing.  Now that we have a FREEZE_OK flag, userspace
> > has to opt-in to slow repairs, and presumably it could choose instead to
> > unmount and run xfs_repair if that's too dear or there are too many
> > broken AGs, etc.  More on that later.
> > 
> > In the long run I don't see a need to freeze the filesystem to scan
> > every inode for bmbt entries in the damaged AG.  In fact, we can improve
> > the performance of all the AG repair functions in general with the
> > scheme I'm about to outline:
> > 
> > Create a "shut down this AG" primitive.  Once set, block and inode
> > allocation routines will bypass this AG.  Unlinked inodes are moved to
> > the unlinked list to avoid touching as much of the AGI as we practically
> > can.  Unmapped/freed blocks can be moved to a hidden inode (in another
> > AG) to be freed later.  Growfs operation in that AG can be rejected.
> > 
> 
> Does it mean that new block allocation requestsvfor inodes already existing in
> the frozen AG will block until the AG is thawed, or these block allocations
> will be redirected to another AG? I'm just asking because in either case, we
> should document it well. The repair case is certainly (or should be) a rare
> case, but if there is any heavy workload going on on the frozen AG, and we
> redirect it to another AG, it can end up heavily fragmenting the files on the
> frozen AG.
> So, I wonder if any operation to the AG under repair should actually be blocked
> too?

I don't think that will be possible for rmapbt repair -- we need to be
able to take locks in the wrong order (agf -> inodes) without
deadlocking with a regular operation that's blocked on the AG (inodes ->
agf).  The freezer mechanism eliminates the deadlock possibility by
eliminating the regular IO paths, so this proposed AG shutdown would
also have to protect against that by absorbing operations.

--D

> Cheers
> 
> 
> -- 
> Carlos
> --
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