Thread (72 messages) 72 messages, 4 authors, 2017-02-16

Re: [PATCH 6/8] blk-mq-sched: add framework for MQ capable IO schedulers

From: Jens Axboe <axboe@fb.com>
Date: 2017-01-17 02:49:06
Also in: lkml

On 12/22/2016 04:13 AM, Paolo Valente wrote:
quoted
Il giorno 22 dic 2016, alle ore 10:59, Paolo Valente [off-list ref] ha scritto:
quoted
Il giorno 17 dic 2016, alle ore 01:12, Jens Axboe [off-list ref] ha scritto:

This adds a set of hooks that intercepts the blk-mq path of
allocating/inserting/issuing/completing requests, allowing
us to develop a scheduler within that framework.

We reuse the existing elevator scheduler API on the registration
side, but augment that with the scheduler flagging support for
the blk-mq interfce, and with a separate set of ops hooks for MQ
devices.

Schedulers can opt in to using shadow requests. Shadow requests
are internal requests that the scheduler uses for for the allocate
and insert part, which are then mapped to a real driver request
at dispatch time. This is needed to separate the device queue depth
from the pool of requests that the scheduler has to work with.

Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@fb.com>
...
quoted
diff --git a/block/blk-mq-sched.c b/block/blk-mq-sched.c
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..b7e1839d4785
--- /dev/null
+++ b/block/blk-mq-sched.c
quoted
...
+static inline bool
+blk_mq_sched_allow_merge(struct request_queue *q, struct request *rq,
+			 struct bio *bio)
+{
+	struct elevator_queue *e = q->elevator;
+
+	if (e && e->type->ops.mq.allow_merge)
+		return e->type->ops.mq.allow_merge(q, rq, bio);
+
+	return true;
+}
+
Something does not seem to add up here:
e->type->ops.mq.allow_merge may be called only in
blk_mq_sched_allow_merge, which, in its turn, may be called only in
blk_mq_attempt_merge, which, finally, may be called only in
blk_mq_merge_queue_io.  Yet the latter may be called only if there is
no elevator (line 1399 and 1507 in blk-mq.c).

Therefore, e->type->ops.mq.allow_merge can never be called, both if
there is and if there is not an elevator.  Be patient if I'm missing
something huge, but I thought it was worth reporting this.
Just another detail: if e->type->ops.mq.allow_merge does get invoked
from the above path, then it is invoked of course without the
scheduler lock held.  In contrast, if this function gets invoked
from dd_bio_merge, then the scheduler lock is held.
But the scheduler controls that itself. So it'd be perfectly fine to
have a locked and unlocked variant. The way that's typically done is to
have function() grabbing the lock, and __function() is invoked with the
lock held.
To handle this opposite alternatives, I don't know whether checking if
the lock is held (and possibly taking it) from inside
e->type->ops.mq.allow_merge is a good solution.  In any case, before
possibly trying it, I will wait for some feedback on the main problem,
i.e., on the fact that e->type->ops.mq.allow_merge
seems unreachable in the above path.
Checking if a lock is held is NEVER a good idea, as it leads to both bad
and incorrect code. If you just check if a lock is held when being
called, you don't necessarily know if it was the caller that grabbed it
or it just happens to be held by someone else for unrelated reasons.


-- 
Jens Axboe
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