Re: [RFC v2 0/1] ext4: fail fast on repeated buffer_head reads after IO failure

[Theodore Tso]

On Mon, Apr 13, 2026 at 02:24:59PM +0800, Diangang Li wrote:
> From: Diangang Li <lidiangang@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> A production system reported hung tasks blocked for 300s+ in ext4
> buffer_head paths....
> 
>   [Tue Mar 24 14:16:24 2026] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sdi,
>       sector 10704150288 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
>   [Tue Mar 24 14:16:25 2026] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sdi,
>       sector 10704488160 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
>   [Tue Mar 24 14:16:26 2026] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sdi,
>       sector 10704382912 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0

I wonder whether the ext4 layer is the right place to be handle this
sort of issue.  For example, it could be handled by having a subsystem
scanning dmesg (or by wiring up notifications so block device errors
get sent to a userspace daemon), and when certain criteria is met, the
machine is automatically sent to hardware operations to run
diagnostics and (most likey) replace the failing disk.

It could also be handled in the driver or SCSI layer so the "fail
fast" semantics are handled there, so that it supports all file
systems, not just ext4.  The SCSI layer also has more information
about the type of error; you might want to handle things like media
errors differently from Fibre Channel or iSCSI timeouts (which might
be something where "fast fast" is not appropriate).

By the time the error gets propagated up to the buffer head, we lose a
lot of detail about why the error took place.  Also, in the long term
we will hopefully be moving away from using buffer cache.

   		     	    	      	    - Ted