Re: elevator private data for REQ_FLUSH

From: Mike Snitzer
Date: Fri Mar 25 2011 - 11:41:26 EST


On Fri, Mar 25 2011 at 11:22am -0400,
Markus Trippelsdorf <markus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 2011.03.25 at 17:15 +0200, Sergey Senozhatsky wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Commit
> > 9d5a4e946ce5352f19400b6370f4cd8e72806278
> > block: skip elevator data initialization for flush requests
> >
> > Skip elevator initialization for flush requests by passing priv=0 to
> > blk_alloc_request() in get_request(). As such elv_set_request() is
> > never called for flush requests.
> >
> > introduced priv flag, to skip elevator_private data init for FLUSH requests.
> > This, I guess, lead to NULL pointer deref on my machine in cfq_insert_request,
> > which requires elevator_private to be set:
> >
> > 1 [ 78.982169] Call Trace:
> > 2 [ 78.982178] [<ffffffff8122d1fe>] cfq_insert_request+0x4e/0x47d
> > 3 [ 78.982184] [<ffffffff8123e139>] ? do_raw_spin_lock+0x6b/0x122
>
> > Should we in that case use ELEVATOR_INSERT_FLUSH for REQ_FLUSH | REQ_FUA requests
> > (like below)?
> >
> > ---
> >
> > block/elevator.c | 2 ++
> > 1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/block/elevator.c b/block/elevator.c
> > index c387d31..b17e577 100644
> > --- a/block/elevator.c
> > +++ b/block/elevator.c
> > @@ -734,6 +734,8 @@ void __elv_add_request(struct request_queue *q, struct request *rq, int where)
> > q->end_sector = rq_end_sector(rq);
> > q->boundary_rq = rq;
> > }
> > + } else if (rq->cmd_flags & (REQ_FLUSH | REQ_FUA)) {
> > + where = ELEVATOR_INSERT_FLUSH;
> > } else if (!(rq->cmd_flags & REQ_ELVPRIV) &&
> > where == ELEVATOR_INSERT_SORT)
> > where = ELEVATOR_INSERT_BACK;
>
> Thanks. That solves all (corruption-) problems that I reported earlier in an other
> thread.

So the flush-merge changes introduced ELEVATOR_INSERT_FLUSH (via commit
ae1b1539). And the flush bio will now get ELEVATOR_INSERT_FLUSH in
__make_request().

So it is interesting that the flush is getting inserted in the elevator
at all. AFAIK that shouldn't be (and historically hasn't been) the
case.

Combination of onstack plug changes?

1 [ 78.982169] Call Trace:
2 [ 78.982178] [<ffffffff8122d1fe>] cfq_insert_request+0x4e/0x47d
3 [ 78.982184] [<ffffffff8123e139>] ? do_raw_spin_lock+0x6b/0x122
4 [ 78.982189] [<ffffffff81218c4a>] elv_insert+0x212/0x265
5 [ 78.982192] [<ffffffff81218ced>] __elv_add_request+0x50/0x52
6 [ 78.982195] [<ffffffff8121b44a>] flush_plug_list+0xce/0x12f
7 [ 78.982199] [<ffffffff8121b4c0>] __blk_flush_plug+0x15/0x21
8 [ 78.982205] [<ffffffff8146b321>] schedule+0x43e/0xbea

Mike
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