DAX error inject/page poison
From: Mike Kravetz
Date: Tue Sep 19 2017 - 19:15:28 EST
We were trying to simulate pmem errors in an environment where a DAX
filesystem is used (ext4 although I suspect it does not matter). The
sequence attempted on a DAX filesystem is:
- Populate a file in the DAX filesystem
- mmap the file
- madvise(MADV_HWPOISON)
The madvise operation fails with EFAULT. This appears to come from
get_user_pages() as there are no struct pages for such mappings?
The idea is to make sure an application can recover from such errors
by hole punching and repopulating with another page.
A couple questions:
It seems like madvise(MADV_HWPOISON) is not going to work (ever?) in
such situations. If so, should we perhaps add a IS_DAX like check and
return something like EINVAL? Or, at least document expected behavior?
If madvise(MADV_HWPOISON) will not work, how can one inject errors to
test error handling code?
--
Mike Kravetz