Re: [PATCH] ata: Add sdev attribute to lower link speed in runtime

[Gustav Ekelund]

On 4/13/24 02:29, Damien Le Moal wrote:
> On 4/12/24 22:48, Gustav Ekelund wrote:
>> Expose a new sysfs attribute to userspace that gives root the ability to
>> lower the link speed in a scsi_device at runtime. The handle enables
>> programs to, based on external circumstances that may be unbeknownst to
>> the kernel, determine if a link should slow down to perhaps achieve a
>> stabler signal. External circumstances could include the mission time
>> of the connected hardware or observations to temperature trends.
> 
> may, perhaps, could... This does not sound very deterministic. Do you have an
> actual practical use case where this patch is useful and solve a real problem ?
> 
> Strictly speaking, if you are seeing link stability issues due to temperature or
> other environmental factors (humidity, altitude), then either you are operating
> your hardware (board and/or HDD) outside of their environmental specifications,
> or you have some serious hardware issues (which can be a simple as a bad SATA
> cable or an inappropriate power supply). In both cases, I do not think that this
> patch will be of any help.
> 
> Furthermore, libata already lowers a link speed automatically at runtime if it
> sees too many NCQ errors. Isn't that enough ? And we also have the horkage flags
> to force a maximum link speed for a device/adapter, which can also be specified
> as a libata module argument (libata.force).
> 
>> Writing 1 to /sys/block/*/device/down_link_spd signals the kernel to
>> first lower the link speed one step with sata_down_spd_limit and then
>> finish off with sata_link_hardreset.
> 
> We already have "/sys/class/ata_link/*/hw_sata_spd_limit", which is read-only
> for now. So if you can really justify this manual link speed tuning for an
> actual use case (not a hypothetical one), then the way to go would be to make
> that attribute RW and implement its store() method to lower the link speed at
> runtime.
> 
> And by the way, looking at what that attribute says, I always get:
> <unknown>
> 
> So it looks like there is an issue with it that went unnoticed (because no one
> is using it...). This needs some fixing.
> 
Hello Damien and Niklas,

Thank you for the feedback.

I have a hotplug system, where the links behave differently depending
on the disk model connected. For some models the kernel emits a lot of
bus errors, but mostly not enough errors for it to automatically lower
the link speed, except during high workloads. I have not observed any
data-loss regarding the errors, but the excessive logging becomes a problem.

So I want to adapt the link, depending on the connected model, in a
running system because I know that some particular models in this case
will operate better in SATA2 in this system.

Can I use the libata.force module to make changes to a particular link
in runtime?

Best regards
Gustav