Re: [PATCH v4] drivers/block/mtip32xx: Adding new driver mtip32xx

From: Christoph Hellwig
Date: Fri Sep 30 2011 - 09:33:34 EST


On Fri, Sep 09, 2011 at 10:58:01AM +0200, Jens Axboe wrote:
> > - handling of REQ_FUA / REQ_FLUSH requests is completely broken.
> > There is a weird barrier flag to mtip_hw_submit_io which set the
> > hwardware FUA bit if the FLUSH bit is set on a request.
> > Please take a look at how this should be handled, the
> > Documentation/block/writeback_cache_control.txt file is the canonical
> > resource. Implementing your driver at the make_request layer
> > unfortunately means you will have to do all the hard work yourself.
>
> I noticed both of these flush/fua problems too and have fixed them up.

I sitll can't find anything doing that in your tree while all kinds of
other patches are in. In fact I can't find a place that sends
ATA_CMD_FLUSH/ATA_CMD_FLUSH_EXT commands, not the required queue
draining for it.

And this stuff really makes me nervous - we get a driver for a new,
expensive high end device and there seems absolutely no concern for
data integrity, or testing of it.

Or does the device not even have a volatile cache at all, and we could
just remove the FUA code? In this case it should be clearly documented
in the driver.
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/