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

From: Jens Axboe
Date: Fri Sep 30 2011 - 17:21:15 EST


On 2011-09-30 07:33, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> 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.

I'm away from home, so changes have been coming in through the laptop.
But don't worry about the driver, it's sort-of in a staging position at
the moment. Before Micron has resolved the issues around queueing etc,
it's not going to be merged into mainline.

> 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.

See reply from Micron folks, there's no write back cache currently.

--
Jens Axboe

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