Re: [Regression] Guest fs corruption with 'block: loop: improve performance via blk-mq'

From: santosh shilimkar
Date: Mon May 18 2015 - 19:18:52 EST


On 5/18/2015 4:14 PM, Ming Lei wrote:
On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 2:07 AM, santosh shilimkar
<santosh.shilimkar@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 5/17/2015 6:26 PM, Ming Lei wrote:

Hi Santosh,

Thanks for your report!

On Sun, May 17, 2015 at 4:13 AM, santosh shilimkar
<santosh.shilimkar@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi Ming Lei, Jens,

While doing few tests with recent kernels with Xen Server,
we saw guests(DOMU) disk image getting corrupted while booting it.
Strangely the issue is seen so far only with disk image over ocfs2
volume. If the same image kept on the EXT3/4 drive, no corruption
is observed. The issue is easily reproducible. You see the flurry
of errors while guest is mounting the file systems.

After doing some debug and bisects, we zeroed down the issue with
commit "b5dd2f6 block: loop: improve performance via blk-mq". With
that commit reverted the corruption goes away.

Some more details on the test setup:
1. OVM(XEN) Server kernel(DOM0) upgraded to more recent kernel
which includes commit b5dd2f6. Boot the Server.
2. On DOM0 file system create a ocfs2 volume
3. Keep the Guest(VM) disk image on ocfs2 volume.
4. Boot guest image. (xm create vm.cfg)


I am not familiar with xen, so is the image accessed via
loop block inside of guest VM? Is he loop block created
in DOM0 or guest VM?

Guest. The Guest disk image is represented as a file by loop
device.

5. Observe the VM boot console log. VM itself use the EXT3 fs.
You will see errors like below and after this boot, that file
system/disk-image gets corrupted and mostly won't boot next time.


OK, that means the image is corrupted by VM booting.

Right

[...]


From the debug of the actual data on the disk vs what is read by
the guest VM, we suspect the *reads* are actually not going all
the way to disk and possibly returning the wrong data. Because
the actual data on ocfs2 volume at those locations seems
to be non-zero where as the guest seems to be read it as zero.


Two big changes in the patchset are: 1) use blk-mq request based IO;
2) submit I/O concurrently(write vs. write is still serialized)

Could you apply the patch in below link to see if it can fix the issue?
BTW, this patch only removes concurrent submission.

http://marc.info/?t=143093223200004&r=1&w=2

What kernel is this patch generated against ? It doesn't apply against
v4.0. Does this need the AIO/DIO conversion patches as well. Do you
have the dependent patch-set I can't apply it against v4.0.

My fault, the patch is against -next tree, but you just need another two
patches for applying this one:

http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/axboe/linux-block.git/commit/?h=for-next&id=f4aa4c7bbac6c4afdd4adccf90898c1a3685396d

http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/axboe/linux-block.git/commit/?h=for-next&id=4d4e41aef9429872ea3b105e83426941f7185ab6

Our emails crossed. I did port that one patch alone and confirm
that the issue is getting fixed. That patch also should go
to v4.0 stable then along with above 2.

Regards,
Santosh
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