From: Luca Boccassi <bluca@debian.org>
To: Hannes Reinecke <hare@suse.de>,
Lennart Poettering <mzxreary@0pointer.de>,
Matteo Croce <mcroce@linux.microsoft.com>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>,
linux-block@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>,
Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
Damien Le Moal <damien.lemoal@wdc.com>, Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>,
Javier Gonz??lez <javier@javigon.com>,
Niklas Cassel <niklas.cassel@wdc.com>,
Johannes Thumshirn <johannes.thumshirn@wdc.com>,
Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>,
JeffleXu <jefflexu@linux.alibaba.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 1/6] block: add disk sequence number
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2021 15:07:22 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <1b55bc67b75e5cf982c0c1e8f45096f2eb6e8590.camel@debian.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <3be63d9f-d8eb-7657-86dc-8d57187e5940@suse.de>
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On Wed, 2021-06-23 at 16:01 +0200, Hannes Reinecke wrote:
> On 6/23/21 3:51 PM, Lennart Poettering wrote:
> > On Mi, 23.06.21 15:10, Matteo Croce (mcroce@linux.microsoft.com) wrote:
> >
> > > On Wed, Jun 23, 2021 at 1:49 PM Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org> wrote:
> > > > On Wed, Jun 23, 2021 at 12:58:53PM +0200, Matteo Croce wrote:
> > > > > +void inc_diskseq(struct gendisk *disk)
> > > > > +{
> > > > > + static atomic64_t diskseq;
> > > >
> > > > Please don't hide file scope variables in functions.
> > > >
> > >
> > > I just didn't want to clobber that file namespace, as that is the only
> > > point where it's used.
> > >
> > > > Can you explain a little more why we need a global sequence count vs
> > > > a per-disk one here?
> > >
> > > The point of the whole series is to have an unique sequence number for
> > > all the disks.
> > > Events can arrive to the userspace delayed or out-of-order, so this
> > > helps to correlate events to the disk.
> > > It might seem strange, but there isn't a way to do this yet, so I come
> > > up with a global, monotonically incrementing number.
> >
> > To extend on this and given an example why the *global* sequence number
> > matters:
> >
> > Consider you plug in a USB storage key, and it gets named
> > /dev/sda. You unplug it, the kernel structures for that device all
> > disappear. Then you plug in a different USB storage key, and since
> > it's the only one it will too be called /dev/sda.
> >
> > With the global sequence number we can still distinguish these two
> > devices even though otherwise they can look pretty much identical. If
> > we had per-device counters then this would fall flat because the
> > counter would be flushed out when the device disappears and when a device
> > reappears under the same generic name we couldn't assign it a
> > different sequence number than before.
> >
> > Thus: a global instead of local sequence number counter is absolutely
> > *key* for the problem this is supposed to solve
> >
> Well ... except that you'll need to keep track of the numbers (otherwise
> you wouldn't know if the numbers changed, right?).
> And if you keep track of the numbers you probably will have to implement
> an uevent listener to get the events in time.
> But if you have an uevent listener you will also get the add/remove
> events for these devices.
> And if you get add and remove events you can as well implement sequence
> numbers in your application, seeing that you have all information
> allowing you to do so.
> So why burden the kernel with it?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Hannes
Hi,
We need this so that we can reliably correlate events to instances of a
device. Events alone cannot solve this problem, because events _are_
the problem.
--
Kind regards,
Luca Boccassi
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-06-23 14:07 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 31+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-06-23 10:58 [PATCH v3 0/6] block: add a sequence number to disks Matteo Croce
2021-06-23 10:58 ` [PATCH v3 1/6] block: add disk sequence number Matteo Croce
2021-06-23 11:48 ` Christoph Hellwig
2021-06-23 13:10 ` Matteo Croce
2021-06-23 13:51 ` Lennart Poettering
2021-06-23 14:01 ` Hannes Reinecke
2021-06-23 14:07 ` Luca Boccassi [this message]
2021-06-23 14:21 ` Hannes Reinecke
2021-06-23 14:34 ` Luca Boccassi
2021-06-23 14:55 ` Lennart Poettering
2021-06-23 14:12 ` Lennart Poettering
2021-06-23 15:02 ` Hannes Reinecke
2021-06-23 15:34 ` Luca Boccassi
2021-06-23 15:48 ` Lennart Poettering
2021-06-23 14:28 ` Christoph Hellwig
2021-06-23 10:58 ` [PATCH v3 2/6] block: add ioctl to read the " Matteo Croce
2021-06-23 10:58 ` [PATCH v3 3/6] block: refactor sysfs code Matteo Croce
2021-06-23 11:52 ` Christoph Hellwig
2021-06-23 19:03 ` Matteo Croce
2021-06-24 6:12 ` Christoph Hellwig
2021-06-23 10:58 ` [PATCH v3 4/6] block: export diskseq in sysfs Matteo Croce
2021-06-23 10:58 ` [PATCH v3 5/6] block: increment sequence number Matteo Croce
2021-06-23 10:58 ` [PATCH v3 6/6] loop: " Matteo Croce
2021-06-23 11:57 ` Christoph Hellwig
2021-06-23 13:13 ` Luca Boccassi
2021-06-23 14:25 ` Christoph Hellwig
2021-06-23 15:29 ` Lennart Poettering
2021-06-24 6:11 ` Christoph Hellwig
2021-06-23 12:03 ` [PATCH v3 0/6] block: add a sequence number to disks Hannes Reinecke
2021-06-23 12:46 ` Luca Boccassi
2021-06-23 14:07 ` Lennart Poettering
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