Re: [RESEND PATCH] dm-ebs: Mark full buffer dirty even on partial write

Uladzislau Rezki
2025-11-20T12:40:36Z

On Thu, Nov 20, 2025 at 01:08:57PM +0100, Uladzislau Rezki wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 20, 2025 at 07:21:46AM +0100, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 06:26:13PM +0100, Mikulas Patocka wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > On Wed, 19 Nov 2025, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Tue, Nov 18, 2025 at 06:21:56PM +0100, Mikulas Patocka wrote:
> > > > > OK - I accepted Uladzislau's patch. As logical block size and physical
> > > > > block size seem to be unreliable, it's better to set the size in dm-ebs.
> > > >
> > > > logical and physical block size are reliable. Uladzislau just seems
> > > > to have a completely broken device that needs fixing, because it will
> > >
> > > He created a qemu-emulated NVMe device with physical and logical block
> > > size 8192 in a virtual machine. And logical block size was reported as 512
> > > in the guest kernel - so it is either a qemu bug or a kernel bug.
> >
> > No, that's not the case. If you use his command line you'll see a qemu
> > device with 8192 logical blocks assuming you have support for large
> > folios, or a completely unusuable device that claims to have 512
> > byte blocks for compatibility, but also a capacity of zero so that no
> > one can use it for anything but passthrough.
> >
> > > in nvme_update_disk_info there is this piece of code:
> > > if (blk_validate_block_size(bs)) {
> > > bs = (1 << 9);
> > > valid = false;
> > > }
> >
> > Yes, that's what I mentioned above. The valid=false sets the capacity
> > to zero, so you're not actually going to be able to use this device.
> >
> > > So, the valid block size depends on whether CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE is
> > > defined, which is quite weird.
> >
> > And also the page size, and none of that is too weird. You need support
> > efficiently allocating large order folios to support a
> > block size > PAGE_SIZE and currently CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE is
> > the guard for that. There was some talk of lifting that, but that
> > requires a bit of work.
> >
> Could you please check below? Is the last one is correctly reported?
> I have enabled the CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE option. If i specify,
> 8192, 8192 first case, reports are what i set. Second variant 512, 8129
> shows 512, 512:
>
> CONFIG_HAVE_ARCH_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE=y
> CONFIG_HAVE_ARCH_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE_PUD=y
> CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE=y
> CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE_ALWAYS=y
> # CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE_MADVISE is not set
> # CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE_NEVER is not set
>
> -device nvme,drive=drv0,serial=foo,logical_block_size=8192,physical_block_size=8192
> urezki@pc638:~$ sudo nvme list
> Node Generic SN Model Namespace Usage Format FW Rev
> --------------------- --------------------- -------------------- ---------------------------------------- --------- -------------------------- ---------------- --------
> /dev/nvme0n1 /dev/ng0n1 foo QEMU NVMe Ctrl 1 8.49 GB / 8.49 GB 8 KiB + 0 B 10.0.6
> urezki@pc638:~$ sudo cat /sys/block/nvme0n1/queue/logical_block_size
> 8192
> urezki@pc638:~$ sudo cat /sys/block/nvme0n1/queue/physical_block_size
> 8192
> urezki@pc638:~$
>
>
> -device nvme,drive=drv0,serial=foo,logical_block_size=512,physical_block_size=8192
> urezki@pc638:~$ sudo nvme list
> Node Generic SN Model Namespace Usage Format FW Rev
> --------------------- --------------------- -------------------- ---------------------------------------- --------- -------------------------- ---------------- --------
> /dev/nvme0n1 /dev/ng0n1 foo QEMU NVMe Ctrl 1 8.49 GB / 8.49 GB 512 B + 0 B 10.0.6
> urezki@pc638:~$ sudo cat /sys/block/nvme0n1/queue/physical_block_size
> 512
> urezki@pc638:~$ sudo cat /sys/block/nvme0n1/queue/logical_block_size
> 512
> urezki@pc638:~$
>
It might be that qemu changes this, i will check.

Christoph, but i assume it is valid case: logical=512B, physical=8192K.
Could you please confirm?

Thanks!

--
Uladzislau Rezki