RE: [PATCH 01/16] hpsa: do readl after writel in main i/o path toensure commands don't get lost.

[Miller, Mike (OS Dev)]

Tomas wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tomas Henzl [mailto:thenzl@xxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Monday, May 23, 2011 6:38 AM
> To: Miller, Mike (OS Dev)
> Cc: Valdis.Kletnieks@xxxxxx; scameron@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; Andrew Morton;
> LKML; LKML-scsi; Jens Axboe
> Subject: Re: [PATCH 01/16] hpsa: do readl after writel in main i/o path
> to ensure commands don't get lost.
> 
> On 05/05/2011 08:35 PM, Mike Miller wrote:
> > On Wed, May 04, 2011 at 01:54:22PM -0400, Valdis.Kletnieks@xxxxxx
> wrote:
> >
> >> On Wed, 04 May 2011 11:37:35 MDT, Matthew Wilcox said:
> >>
> >>>> This probably needs a comment like
> >>>> 	/* don't care - dummy read just to force write posting to chipset
> */
> >>>> or similar.  I'm assuming it's just functioning as a barrier-type
> flush of some sort?
> >>>>
> >>> It's a PCI write flush.  It's not clear to me why it's needed here,
> >>> though.  The write will eventually get to the device; why we need to
> >>> make the CPU wait around for it to actually get there doesn't make
> sense.
> >>>
> >> Exactly why I think it needs a one-liner comment. :)
> >>
> >>
> > So we're not exactly sure why it's needed either. We've had reports of
> > commands getting "lost" or "stuck" under some workloads. The extra
> readl
> > works around the issue but certainly may have negative side effects.
> >
> > I'm not sure I understand how writel works.
> >
> > From linux-2.6/arch/x86/include/asm/io.h:
> >
> > #define build_mmio_write(name, size, type, reg, barrier) \
> > static inline void name(type val, volatile void __iomem *addr) \
> > { asm volatile("mov" size " %0,%1": :reg (val), \
> > "m" (*(volatile type __force *)addr) barrier); }
> >
> > This implies (at least to me) that a barrier is part of writel. I
> don't know
> > why a write operation needs a barrier but thats essentially what we've
> done
> > by adding the extra readl. Can someone confirm or deny that a barrier
> is
> > actually built into writel? Or used by writel? If so, does this
> indicate
> > that barrier is broken?
> >
> > At this point we (the software guys) are pretty much at a loss as to
> how to
> > continue debugging. We don't know what to trigger on for the PCIe
> analyzer.
> > If we track outstanding commands then trigger on one that doesn't
> complete in
> > some amount of time the problem could conceivably be far in the past
> and
> > difficult to correlate to the data in the trace.
> >
> I'd look at the firmware part, you could check what happens for example
> when
> the firmware gets send a command it doesn't understand.
> You could also change the communication with the fw by adding a count
> field, which can
> be then checked for the !(next_value == previous_value + 1) and raise an
> event.
> tomas

Tomas,
We've tried something very similar to the counter idea in fw. It doesn't help because the controller thinks he's done with the request. We have a (pretty crude) counter in the driver but no timing mechanism. We could add a timer. But what's a suitable timeout value? Is 2 seconds too short, too long? Suggestions, please.

-- mikem


> 
> 
> > If anyone has any thoughts, suggestions, or flames they would be
> greatly
> > appreciated.
> >
> > -- mikem
> > --
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