Re: [dm-devel] [PATCH 0/6] dax poison recovery with RWF_RECOVERY_DATA flag

[Dan Williams]

On Wed, Nov 3, 2021 at 9:58 AM Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Nov 02, 2021 at 12:57:10PM -0700, Dan Williams wrote:
> > This goes back to one of the original DAX concerns of wanting a kernel
> > library for coordinating PMEM mmap I/O vs leaving userspace to wrap
> > PMEM semantics on top of a DAX mapping. The problem is that mmap-I/O
> > has this error-handling-API issue whether it is a DAX mapping or not.
>
> Semantics of writes through shared mmaps are a nightmare.  Agreed,
> including agreeing that this is neither new nor pmem specific.  But
> it also has absolutely nothing to do with the new RWF_ flag.

Ok.

> > CONFIG_ARCH_SUPPORTS_MEMORY_FAILURE implies that processes will
> > receive SIGBUS + BUS_MCEERR_A{R,O} when memory failure is signalled
> > and then rely on readv(2)/writev(2) to recover. Do you see a readily
> > available way to improve upon that model without CPU instruction
> > changes? Even with CPU instructions changes, do you think it could
> > improve much upon the model of interrupting the process when a load
> > instruction aborts?
>
> The "only" think we need is something like the exception table we
> use in the kernel for the uaccess helpers (and the new _nofault
> kernel access helper).  But I suspect refitting that into userspace
> environments is probably non-trivial.

Is the exception table requirement not already fulfilled by:

sigaction(SIGBUS, &act, 0);
...
if (sigsetjmp(sj_env, 1)) {
...

...but yes, that's awkward when all you want is an error return from a
copy operation.

For _nofault I'll note that on the kernel side Linus was explicit
about not mixing fault handling and memory error exception handling in
the same accessor. That's why copy_mc_to_kernel() and
copy_{to,from}_kernel_nofault() are distinct. I only say that to probe
deeper about what a "copy_mc()" looks like in userspace? Perhaps an
interface to suppress SIGBUS generation and register a ring buffer
that gets filled with error-event records encountered over a given
MMAP I/O code sequence?

> > I do agree with you that DAX needs to separate itself from block, but
> > I don't think it follows that DAX also needs to separate itself from
> > readv/writev for when a kernel slow-path needs to get involved because
> > mmap I/O (just CPU instructions) does not have the proper semantics.
> > Even if you got one of the ARCH_SUPPORTS_MEMORY_FAILURE to implement
> > those semantics in new / augmented CPU instructions you will likely
> > not get all of them to move and certainly not in any near term
> > timeframe, so the kernel path will be around indefinitely.
>
> I think you misunderstood me.  I don't think pmem needs to be
> decoupled from the read/write path.  But I'm very skeptical of adding
> a new flag to the common read/write path for the special workaround
> that a plain old write will not actually clear errors unlike every
> other store interfac.

Ah, ok, yes, I agree with you there that needing to redirect writes to
a platform firmware call to clear errors, and notify the device that
its error-list has changed is exceedingly awkward. That said, even if
the device-side error-list auto-updated on write (like the promise of
MOVDIR64B) there's still the question about when to do management on
the software error lists in the driver and/or filesytem. I.e. given
that XFS at least wants to be aware of the error lists for block
allocation and "list errors" type features. More below...

> > Meanwhile, I think RWF_RECOVER_DATA is generically useful for other
> > storage besides PMEM and helps storage-drivers do better than large
> > blast radius "I/O error" completions with no other recourse.
>
> How?

Hasn't this been a perennial topic at LSF/MM, i.e. how to get an
interface for the filesystem to request "try harder" to return data?
If the device has a recovery slow-path, or error tracking granularity
is smaller than the I/O size, then RWF_RECOVER_DATA gives the
device/driver leeway to do better than the typical fast path. For
writes though, I can only come up with the use case of this being a
signal to the driver to take the opportunity to do error-list
management relative to the incoming write data.

However, if signaling that "now is the time to update error-lists" is
the requirement, I imagine the @kaddr returned from
dax_direct_access() could be made to point to an unmapped address
representing the poisoned page. Then, arrange for a pmem-driver fault
handler to emulate the copy operation and do the slow path updates
that would otherwise have been gated by RWF_RECOVER_DATA.

Although, I'm not excited about teaching every PMEM arch's fault
handler about this new source of kernel faults. Other ideas?
RWF_RECOVER_DATA still seems the most viable / cleanest option, but
I'm willing to do what it takes to move this error management
capability forward.