Re: [PATCH] cciss: force ignore of responses to unsent scsi commands after kexec reboot

[Neil Horman]

On Thu, Jun 14, 2007 at 06:16:03PM -0000, Miller, Mike (OS Dev) wrote:
>  
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Neil Horman [mailto:nhorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
> > Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2007 10:31 AM
> > To: linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Cc: Miller, Mike (OS Dev); ISS StorageDev; 
> > akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; nhorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Subject: [PATCH] cciss: force ignore of responses to unsent 
> > scsi commands after kexec reboot
> > 
> > Hey -
> > 	cciss hardware currently can continue to send responses 
> > to scsi commands after the host system has undergone a kexec 
> > reboot.  The way the drier is currently written, reception of 
> > these commands results in a BUG halt, since it can't match 
> > the response to any issued command since the boot.  This 
> > patch corrects that by using the kexec reset_devices command 
> > line paramter to force ignore any commands that it cant correlate.
> > 
> > Regards
> > Neil
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Neil Horman <nhorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > 
> > 
> >  cciss.c |    8 ++++++++
> >  1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)
> > 
> > 
> > diff --git a/drivers/block/cciss.c b/drivers/block/cciss.c 
> > index 5acc6c4..ec1c1d2 100644
> > --- a/drivers/block/cciss.c
> > +++ b/drivers/block/cciss.c
> > @@ -2131,6 +2131,14 @@ static int add_sendcmd_reject(__u8 
> > cmd, int ctlr, unsigned long complete)
> >  		       ctlr, complete);
> >  		/* not much we can do. */
> >  #ifdef CONFIG_CISS_SCSI_TAPE
> > +		/* We might get notification of completion of commands
> > +		 * which we never issued in this kernel if this boot is
> > +		 * taking place after previous kernel's crash. Simply
> > +		 * ignore the commands in this case.
> > +		 */
> > +		if (reset_devices)
> > +			return 0;
> > +
> >  		return 1;
> >  	}
> >  
> I don't understand how this will help. We need to reset the controller
> which reset_devices cannot do alone. I just haven't have the time to
> implement the fix yet.
> 
> mikem 

I definately agree.  Actually resetting the hardware so that odd responses would
never be received would be a much better solution.  However, when this problem
(and the above corresponding workaround to fix it) was first proposed almost a
year ago:
http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0606.2/3055.html

It was met with no action.  I understand that actually doing a reset of the
hardware is a much better solution, but I'm certainly not knoweldgeable enough,
nor do I have the documentation needed to implement that solution.  Until it is,
this patch lets kexec work properly on this hardware, which I think is a good
trade until such time as the proper fix is implemented.

Thanks & Regards
Neil

-- 
/***************************************************
 *Neil Horman
 *Software Engineer
 *Red Hat, Inc.
 *nhorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
 *gpg keyid: 1024D / 0x92A74FA1
 *http://pgp.mit.edu
 ***************************************************/
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