Re: DAX can not work on virtual nvdimm device

From: Xiao Guangrong
Date: Mon Aug 29 2016 - 03:59:38 EST



Hi Ross,

Sorry for the delay, i just returned back from KVM Forum.

On 08/20/2016 02:30 AM, Ross Zwisler wrote:
On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 07:59:29AM -0700, Dan Williams wrote:
On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 4:19 AM, Xiao Guangrong
<guangrong.xiao@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi Dan,

Recently, Redhat reported that nvml test suite failed on QEMU/KVM,
more detailed info please refer to:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1365721

The reason for this bug is that the memory region created by mmap()
on the dax-based file was gone so that the region can not be found
in /proc/self/smaps during the runtime.

This is a simple way to trigger this issue:
mount -o dax /dev/pmem0 /mnt/pmem/
vim /mnt/pmem/xxx
then 'vim' is crashed due to segment fault.

This bug can be reproduced on your tree, the top commit is
10d7902fa0e82b (dax: unmap/truncate on device shutdown), the kernel
configure file is attached.

Your thought or comment is highly appreciated.

I'm going to be offline until Tuesday, but I will investigate when I'm
back. In the meantime if Ross or Vishal had an opportunity to take a
look I wouldn't say "no" :).

I haven't been able to reproduce this vim segfault. I'm using QEMU v2.6.0,
and the kernel commit you mentioned, and your kernel config.

Here's my QEMU command line:

sudo ~/qemu/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 /var/lib/libvirt/images/alara.qcow2 \
-machine pc,nvdimm -m 8G,maxmem=100G,slots=100 -object \
memory-backend-file,id=mem1,share,mem-path=/dev/pmem0,size=8G -device \
nvdimm,memdev=mem1,id=nv1 -smp 6 -machine pc,accel=kvm

With this I'm able to mkfs the guest's /dev/pmem0, mount it with -o dax, and
write a file with vim.

Thanks for your test. That's strange...


Can you reproduce your results with a pmem device created via a memmap kernel
command line parameter in the guest? You'll need to update your kernel
config to enable CONFIG_X86_PMEM_LEGACY and CONFIG_X86_PMEM_LEGACY_DEVICE.


Okay, i tested it with mmap=6G!10G, it failed too. So it looks like it's a
filesystem or DAX issue.

More precisely, i figured out the root case that read() returns a wrong value
when it reaches the end of the file, following test case can trigger it:

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
char *filename;

if (argc < 2) {
printf("arg: filename.\n");
return -1;
}

filename = argv[1];
printf("test on %s.\n", filename);

int fd = open(filename, O_RDWR);

if (fd < 0) {
perror("open");
return -1;
}

int count = 0;

while (1) {
ssize_t ret;
char buf;

ret = read(fd, &buf, sizeof(buf));
if (ret < 0) {
perror("READ");
return -1;
}

if (ret == 0)
break;
if (ret != sizeof(buf)) {
printf("Count %x Ret %lx sizeof(buf) %lx.\n",
count, ret, sizeof(buf));
return -1;
}

count++;
printf("%c", buf);
}

printf("\n Good Read.\n");
return 0;
}



It will fail at "ret != sizeof(buf)", for example, the error output on my
test env is:
Count 1000 Ret 22f84200 sizeof(buf) 1.