Re: [PATCH] libnvdimm: rework region badblocks clearing

[Kani, Toshimitsu]

On Mon, 2017-05-01 at 09:16 -0700, Dan Williams wrote:
> On Mon, May 1, 2017 at 9:12 AM, Kani, Toshimitsu <toshi.kani@xxxxxxx>
> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2017-05-01 at 08:52 -0700, Dan Williams wrote:
> > > On Mon, May 1, 2017 at 8:43 AM, Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@inte
> > > l.co
> > > m> wrote:
> > > > On Mon, May 1, 2017 at 8:34 AM, Kani, Toshimitsu <toshi.kani@hp
> > > > e.co
> > > > m> wrote:
> > > > > On Sun, 2017-04-30 at 05:39 -0700, Dan Williams wrote:
> > 
> > Â:
> > > > > 
> > > > > Hi Dan,
> > > > > 
> > > > > I was testing the change with CONFIG_DEBUG_ATOMIC_SLEEP set
> > > > > this time, and hit the following BUG with BTT.ÂÂThis is a
> > > > > separate issue (not introduced by this patch), but it shows
> > > > > that we have an issue with the DSM call path as well.
> > > > 
> > > > Ah, great find, thanks! We don't see this in the unit tests
> > > > because the nfit_test infrastructure takes no sleeping actions
> > > > in its simulated DSM path. Outside of converting btt to use
> > > > sleeping locks I'm not sure I see a path forward. I wonder how
> > > > bad the performance impact of that would be? Perhaps with
> > > > opportunistic spinning it won't be so bad, but I don't see
> > > > another choice.
> > > 
> > > It's worse than that. Part of the performance optimization of BTT
> > > I/O was to avoid locking altogether when we could rely on a BTT
> > > lane percpu, so that would also need to be removed.
> > 
> > I do not have a good idea either, but I'd rather disable this
> > clearing in the regular BTT write path than adding sleeping locks
> > to BTT. Clearing a bad block in the BTT write path is
> > difficult/challenging since it allocates a new block.
> 
> Actually, that may make things easier. Can we teach BTT to track
> error blocks and clear them before they are reassigned?

I was thinking the same after sending it.  I think we should be able to
do that.

Thanks,
-Toshi