Re: smp dead lock of io_request_lock/queue_lock patch

[Doug Ledford]

On Mon, 2004-01-19 at 16:36, Martin Peschke3 wrote:
> Doug Ledford wrote:
> > On Tue, 2004-01-13 at 15:55, Marcelo Tosatti wrote:
> > > What is this mlqueue patchset fixing ? To tell you the truth, I'm not
> > > aware of the SCSI stack problems.
> >
> > OK.  This is a different problem entirely.  The current 2.4 scsi stack
> > has a problem handling QUEUE_FULL and BUSY status commands.  Amongst
> > other things, it retries the command immediately and will basically hang
> > the SCSI bus if the low level driver doesn't intervene.  Most well
> > written drivers have workaround code in them (including my aic7xxx_old
> > driver). The mlqueue patch changes it so that the mid layer implements
> > delayed retries of QUEUE_FULL and BUSY commands.  It also makes the mid
> > layer recognize the situation where you get a QUEUE_FULL or BUSY command
> > status with 0 outstanding commands.  This used to cause the mid layer to
> > hang on that device because there would be no command completion to kick
> > the queue back into gear.
> 
> http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=106001205900001&r=1&w=2
> We also stumbled about this problem last year. Our patch wasn't
> as sophisticated as Doug's new patch. However, it worked,
> and some fix is certainly needed.

I got tied up on other stuff and Marcelo's tree went into -rc mode.  So,
I waited out the next release.  At this point, there is some stuff up
and available for testing.  There are some very minimal patches in the
bk://linux-scsi.bkbits.net/2.4-for-marcelo tree.  The 2.4-drivers tree
is just a clone of the 2.4-for-marcelo tree because I haven't done the
drivers yet.  The 2.4-everything tree includes the io_request_lock
patch, the few patches the io_request_lock patch depended on, the
softirq patch, the mlqueue fixes patch, and some more misc. stuff.  I'm
not done with the 2.4-everything tree, but what I've got so far is now
working for me.  I haven't done much testing yet so caveat emptor.  I'll
make another announcement when I've both A) finished putting everything
in the 2.4-everything tree that I was planning on putting in and B)
completed the audit of the code to make sure the merges were all
successful.  But I know Jens had asked to see the mlqueue patch in
particular, so I figured I would announce that the forward ported
version is in the 2.4-everything tree for people to look at.

The number of pure bugfix patches in the 2.4-for-marcelo tree is
actually pretty small.  The biggest bugfix patch by far is the mlqueue
patch in the 2.4-everything tree, but it depends on a lot of other stuff
so it would be hard to stick it into the 2.4-for-marcelo tree.  Quite a
few of the patches in the 2.4-everything tree are there for performance
reasons only, but they do a pretty good job of making the 2.4 scsi stack
not feel like it's moving at about the same speed as a heavily salted
slug.


-- 
  Doug Ledford <dledford@xxxxxxxxxx>     919-754-3700 x44233
         Red Hat, Inc.
         1801 Varsity Dr.
         Raleigh, NC 27606


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