Re: [PATCH 0/3] scsi: usb-storage: hide errors for five devices

From: Alan Stern
Date: Tue May 08 2012 - 13:03:18 EST


On Tue, 8 May 2012, Paul Bolle wrote:

> On Tue, 2012-05-08 at 10:02 -0400, Alan Stern wrote:
> > On Tue, 8 May 2012, Paul Bolle wrote:
> > > 1) These patches try to hide those errors by:
> > > - downgrading one error to a notice; and
> >
> > That's a reasonable thing to do, IMO.
> >
> > > - setting the NO_WP_DETECT quirk for these five devices.
> >
> > But that isn't. These quirks are intended for devices that crash when
> > they receive the command in question.
>
> Yes, these USB memory sticks don't crash. (They actually seem to work
> just fine, something that I perhaps should have emphasized in the commit
> descriptions.)
>
> > They aren't meant to suppress sending commands to devices that can
> > properly reject them.
>
> Even the sticks that hit "bad_sense" (in sd_read_cache_type(), which I
> forgot to mention in the comment descriptions)? Is that not as severe as
> it suggests?

It means that the device either doesn't support the MODE SENSE command
or it returned useless data. As a result, we will assume it has a
write-through cache when it might not.

For memory sticks this doesn't matter. For other devices it might be
more important (although anything with a working cache should not hit
this error case).

> Of course, an easy way out would be to downgrade both the "Asking for
> cache data failed" and the "No Caching mode page present" errors to
> notices. But the SCSI people might disagree with that approach.

Well, let's see what they say.

Alan Stern

--
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/