Re: [PATCH 3/6] block: add support for zone offline transition

["hch@lst.de" <hch@lst.de>]

On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 09:15:14AM +0000, Damien Le Moal wrote:
> On 2020/06/26 18:11, hch@lst.de wrote:
> > On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 01:14:30AM +0000, Damien Le Moal wrote:
> >> As long as you keep ZNS namespace report itself as being "host-managed" like
> >> ZBC/ZAC disks, we need the consistency and common interface. If you break that,
> >> the meaning of the zoned model queue attribute disappears and an application or
> >> in-kernel user cannot rely on this model anymore to know how the drive will behave.
> > 
> > We just need a way to expose to applications that new feature are
> > supported.  Just like we did with zone capacity support.  That is why
> > we added the feature flags to uapi zone structure.
> > 
> >> Think of a file system, or any other in-kernel user. If they have to change
> >> their code based on the device type (NVMe vs SCSI), then the zoned block device
> >> interface is broken. Right now, that is not the case, everything works equally
> >> well on ZNS and SCSI, modulo the need by a user for conventional zones that ZNS
> >> do not define. But that is still consistent with the host-managed model since
> >> conventional zones are optional.
> > 
> > That is why we have the feature flag.  That user should not know the
> > underlying transport or spec.  But it can reliably discover "this thing
> > support zone capacity" or "this thing supports offline zones" or even
> > nasty thing like "this zone can time out when open" which are much
> > harder to deal with.
> > 
> >> For this particular patch, there is currently no in-kernel user, and it is not
> >> clear how this will be useful to applications. At least please clarify this. And
> > 
> > The main user is the ioctl.  And if you think about how offline zones are
> > (suppose to) be used driving this from management tools in userspace
> > actually totally make sense.  Unlike for example open/close all which
> > just don't make sense as primitives to start with.
> 
> OK. Adding a new BLKZONEOFFLINE ioctl is easy though and fits into the current
> zone management plumbing well, I think. So the patch can be significantly
> simplified (no need for the new zone management op function with flags).

Yes, I'm all for reusing the existing plumbing and style as much as
possible.