Re: [PATCH 14/15] libnvdimm: support read-only btt backing devices

Christoph Hellwig
2015-06-22T15:41:05Z

On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 12:39:34AM -0700, Dan Williams wrote:
> Now I'm confused, you *don't* want the raw device to be hidden *and*
> you want to kill the stacking? Something got crossed. The current
> implementation hides nothing, you get to see the entire stacked
> composition. I'd much prefer to avoid hiding anything.

You see it, but you can't actually use it. The proper way to expose it
would be to the devices visible in the low-level bus sysfs enumeration
logic but only one ULD attach to it.

> The sinister aspect of sector tearing is that most applications don't
> know they have this dependency. At least today's disk's rarely ever
> tear sectors and if they do you almost certainly get a CRC error on
> access. NVDIMMs will always tear and always silently. I think not
> merging BTT at all to see what happens is simply wrong.

So now you leave your users with a choice between a rock and a hard
place, that is using BTT to introduce non-significant overhead and not
supporting DAX or just use it as-is.