Re: Data corruption in kernel 5.1+ with iSER attached ramdisk

[Ming Lei <ming.lei@redhat.com>]

On Wed, Nov 27, 2019 at 08:18:30PM -0600, Rob Townley wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 27, 2019 at 7:58 PM Ming Lei <ming.lei@redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 27, 2019 at 02:38:42PM -0500, Stephen Rust wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > We recently began testing 5.4 in preparation for migration from 4.14. One
> > > of our tests found reproducible data corruption in 5.x kernels. The test
> > > consists of a few basic single-issue writes to an iSER attached ramdisk.
> > > The writes are subsequently verified with single-issue reads. We tracked
> > > the corruption down using git bisect. The issue appears to have started
> > in
> > > 5.1 with the following commit:
> > >
> > > 3d75ca0adef4280650c6690a0c4702a74a6f3c95 block: introduce multi-page bvec
> > > helpers
> > >
> > > We wanted to bring this to your attention. A reproducer and the git
> > bisect
> > > data follows below.
> > >
> > > Our setup consists of two systems: A ramdisk exported in a LIO target
> > from
> > > host A, iSCSI attached with iSER / RDMA from host B. Specific writes to
> > the
> >
> > Could you explain a bit what is iSCSI attached with iSER / RDMA? Is the
> > actual transport TCP over RDMA? What is related target driver involved?
> >
> > > very end of the attached disk on B result in incorrect data being written
> > > to the remote disk. The writes appear to complete successfully on the
> > > client. We’ve also verified that the correct data is being sent over the
> > > network by tracing the RDMA flow. For reference, the tests were conducted
> > > on x86_64 Intel Skylake systems with Mellanox ConnectX5 NICs.
> >
> > If I understand correctly, LIO ramdisk doesn't generate any IO to block
> > stack, see rd_execute_rw(), and the ramdisk should be one big/long
> > pre-allocated sgl, see rd_build_device_space().
> >
> > Seems very strange, given no bvec/bio is involved in this code
> > path from iscsi_target_rx_thread to rd_execute_rw. So far I have no idea
> > how commit 3d75ca0adef428065 causes this issue, because that patch
> > only changes bvec/bio related code.
> >
> > >
> > > The issue appears to lie on the target host side. The initiator kernel
> > > version does not appear to play a role. The target host exhibits the
> > issue
> > > when running kernel version 5.1+.
> > >
> > > To reproduce, given attached sda on client host B, write data at the end
> > of
> > > the device:
> > >
> > >
> > > SIZE=$(blockdev --getsize64 /dev/sda)
> > >
> > > SEEK=$((( $SIZE - 512 )))
> > >
> > > # initialize device and seed data
> > >
> > > dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 seek=$SEEK oflag=seek_bytes
> > > oflag=direct
> > >
> > > dd if=/dev/urandom of=/tmp/random bs=512 count=1 oflag=direct
> > >
> > >
> > > # write the random data (note: not direct)
> > >
> > > dd if=/tmp/random of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 seek=$SEEK oflag=seek_bytes
> > >
> > >
> > > # verify the data was written
> > >
> > > dd if=/dev/sda of=/tmp/verify bs=512 count=1 skip=$SEEK iflag=skip_bytes
> > > iflag=direct
> > >
> > > hexdump -xv /tmp/random > /tmp/random.hex
> > >
> > > hexdump -xv /tmp/verify > /tmp/verify.hex
> > >
> > > diff -u /tmp/random.hex /tmp/verify.hex
> >
> > I just setup one LIO for exporting ramdisk(2G) via iscsi, and run the
> > above test via iscsi HBA, still can't reproduce the issue.
> >
> > > # first bad commit: [3d75ca0adef4280650c6690a0c4702a74a6f3c95] block:
> > > introduce multi-page bvec helpers
> > >
> > >
> > > Please advise. We have cycles and systems to help track down the issue.
> > Let
> > > me know how best to assist.
> >
> > Could you install bcc and start to collect the following trace on target
> > side
> > before you run the above test in host side?
> >
> > /usr/share/bcc/tools/stackcount -K rd_execute_rw
> >
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Ming
> >
> 
> 
> Interesting case to follow as there are many types of RamDisks.  The common
> tmpfs kind will use its RAM allocation and all free harddrive space.
> 
> The ramdisk in CentOS 7 backed by LIO will overflow its size in RAM and
> fill up all remaining free space on spinning platters.  So if the RamDisk
> is 4GB out of 192GB RAM in the lightly used machine. Free filesystem space
> is 16GB.  Writes to the 4GB RamDisk will only error out at 21GB when there
> is no space left on filesystem.
> 
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/iscsiRamDisk
> Will keep writing way past 4GB and not stop till hardrive is full which is
> totally different than normal disks.
> 
> Wonder what exact kind of RamDisk is in that kernel?

In my test, it is the LIO built-in ramdisk:

/backstores/ramdisk> create rd0 2G
Created ramdisk rd0 with size 2G.
/backstores/ramdisk> ls
o- ramdisk ......................................................................... [Storage Objects: 1]
  o- rd0 ......................................................................... [(2.0GiB) deactivated]
    o- alua ............................................................................ [ALUA Groups: 1]
      o- default_tg_pt_gp ................................................ [ALUA state: Active/optimized]

Stephen, could you share us how you setup the ramdisk in your test?

Thanks, 
Ming