Re: [Qemu-devel] [Nbd] Is NBD_CMD_FLAG_FUA valid during NBD_CMD_FLUSH?

[Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>]

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On 03/31/2016 02:34 PM, Eric Blake wrote:
> On 03/31/2016 02:17 PM, Alex Bligh wrote:
>> OK so I actually went and researched what my answer was last time I
>> was asked ( :-) ):
>>
>> Here was my conclusion last time after trawling through lkml
>> on the subject:
>>
>> From https://sourceforge.net/p/nbd/mailman/message/27569820/
>>

>>> Meanwhile, it sounds like FUA is valid on read, write, AND flush
>>> (because the kernel supports all three),
>>
>> Do you have a pointer to what FUA means on kernel reads? Does it
> 
> No clue. I'm not a kernel expert, and was assuming that you knew more
> about it than me.
> 
>> mean "force unit access for the read" or does it mean "flush any
>> write for that block first"? The first is subtly different if the
>> file is remote and being accessed by multiple people (e.g. NFS, Ceph etc.)
> 
> I would lean to the latter - FUA on a read seems like it is most useful
> if it means "guarantee that no one else can read something older than
> what I read", and NOT "give me possibly stale data because I accessed
> the underlying storage rather than paying attention to in-flight writes
> that would change what I read".  In other words, I think you should
> ALWAYS prefer data from in-flight writes over going to backing storage,
> but USUALLY don't need the overhead of waiting for those writes to
> complete; FUA slows down your read, but gives you better data assurance.

SCSI defines FUA on both reads and writes.  Reading
http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/scsi/100293068a.pdf
under READ(10), I see:

"The force unit access (FUA) and force unit access non-volatile cache
(FUA_NV) bits are defined in table 87.
...
The device server shall read the logical blocks from the medium. If a
cache contains a more
recent version of a logical block, the device server shall write the
logical block to the medium
before reading it.
"

Whether the kernel exposes this aspect of SCSI FUA bit through its bio
interface (and if not, whether it should) are a different matter, but it
sounds like since at least SCSI has a definition for FUA on read, maybe
NBD should (someday) likewise add a definition for it.  At least for
now, we left the door open for it, by at least requiring that servers
not reject the flag, although there may be some discovery issues to
figure out before a client can reasonably know that its FUA-on-read
requests will actually be honored.

> 
>>
>>> even if we aren't quite sure
>>> what to document of those flags.  And that means qemu is correct, and
>>> the NBD protocol has a bug.  Since you contributed the FUA flag, is that
>>> something you can try to improve?
>>
>> Yeah. My mess so I should clean it up. I think FUA should be valid
>> on essentially everything.
>>
>> I think I might wait until structured replies is in though!
> 
> It's also tricky because we just barely documented that servers SHOULD
> reject invalid flags with EINVAL; and that clients MUST NOT send FUA on
> commands where it is not documented; I don't know if we have an adequate
> discovery system in place to learn _which_ commands support FUA,
> especially if you are proposing that we expand the scope of FUA to be
> valid alongside a TRIM request.
> 
> It doesn't have to be solved today, though, so I'm fine if you wait for
> structured replies first.
> 

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org


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