Re: Scatter-gather list constraints

[Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>]

On Thu, Jun 26 2008, Alan Stern wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Jun 2008, Jens Axboe wrote:
> 
> > Alan, in what specific cases have you observed IO requests that violate
> > the rules you gave? The example of:
> > 
> > "For example, suppose an I/O request starts out with two S-G elements of
> > 1536 bytes and 2048 bytes respectively, and the DMA requirement is"
> > 
> > really sounds concocted, have you ever seen something like that?
> 
> It really was observed, though not by me.  Here's the email message in
> which it was reported (for some reason this doesn't seem to have made 
> it into the list archives):
> 
> > From antonio.lin@alcormicro.com Thu Jun 26 11:05:30 2008
> > Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 20:51:52 +0800
> > From: AntonioLin <antonio.lin@alcormicro.com>
> > To: Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>
> > Cc: David Vrabel <david.vrabel@csr.com>, linux-usb@vger.kernel.org
> > Subject: Re: [S] Re: [linux-uwb] packet size problem
> > 
> > Hi All,
> > 
> > I checked srb->device->request_queue->dma_alignment in usb_stor_bulk_Bulk_transport() routine. , the value is 1023.
> > 
> > But in usb_stor_bulk_transfer_sglist, the length of first element in sg array is 3584 which is not divisible by 1024.
> > 
> > 
> > Can you post your /proc/bus/usb/devices ?
> > 
> > I don't know how to do this, could you descript moe about it ?
> > (Sorry,I have few experience about Linux.)
> > 
> > Thanks.
> > 
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.320234] usb-storage: *** thread sleeping.
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.320271] usb-storage: queuecommand called
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.320288] usb-storage: *** thread awakened.
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.320294] usb-storage: Command READ_10 (10 bytes)
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.320297] usb-storage:  28 00 00 00 a8 91 00 00 1f 00
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.320316] usb_stor_Bulk_transport:dma_alignment:1023
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.320322] usb-storage: Bulk Command S 0x43425355 T 0x2f L 15872 F 128 Trg 0 LUN 0 CL 10
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.320327] usb-storage: usb_stor_bulk_transfer_buf: xfer 31 bytes
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.320333] hwahc_op_urb_enqueue
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.320340] xfer d3202dc0 urb d30e6780 pipe 0xc0008200 [31 bytes] dma outbound inline
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1956.597834] giveback d3202dc0 0
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.323583] usb-storage: Status code 0; transferred 31/31
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.323588] usb-storage: -- transfer complete
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.323593] usb-storage: Bulk command transfer result=0
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.323598] usb-storage: usb_stor_bulk_transfer_sglist: xfer 15872 bytes, 4 entries
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.323611] hwahc_op_urb_enqueue
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.323618] xfer d3202000 urb d30e6c00 pipe 0xc0008280 [3584 bytes] dma inbound deferred
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.323633] hwahc_op_urb_enqueue
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.323640] xfer d32020c0 urb d30e6180 pipe 0xc0008280 [4096 bytes] dma inbound deferred
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.323647] hwahc_op_urb_enqueue
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.323652] xfer d3202780 urb d30e6900 pipe 0xc0008280 [4096 bytes] dma inbound deferred
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.323659] hwahc_op_urb_enqueue
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1959.323665] xfer d3202800 urb d30e6100 pipe 0xc0008280 [4096 bytes] dma inbound deferred
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1956.607877] hwa-hc 1-4:1.1: DTI: xfer d3202000#0 failed (0x87)
> > Jun 11 16:43:14 localhost kernel: [ 1956.607877] giveback d3202000 -84
> 
> As you can see, the S-G element lengths for this I/O request were 3584, 
> 4096, 4096, 4096, totalling 15872 bytes.  I don't know what workload 
> caused this request to be generated; maybe Antonio can tell us.

OK, I can see that happening for fs IO if the block alignment odd. The
1kb block size would definitely fix that, but cause SCSI to treat you as
such and cause problems as well. Alright, I'll write something up for
you to bounce such a request.

-- 
Jens Axboe