From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261463AbTKBGGP (ORCPT ); Sun, 2 Nov 2003 01:06:15 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261473AbTKBGGO (ORCPT ); Sun, 2 Nov 2003 01:06:14 -0500 Received: from astound-64-85-224-253.ca.astound.net ([64.85.224.253]:39173 "EHLO master.linux-ide.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261463AbTKBGGM (ORCPT ); Sun, 2 Nov 2003 01:06:12 -0500 Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 22:05:31 -0800 (PST) From: Andre Hedrick To: Ville Herva cc: Willy Tarreau , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: ide write cache issue? [Re: Something corrupts raid5 disks slightly during reboot] In-Reply-To: <20031101210223.GM4640@niksula.cs.hut.fi> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org I added the flush code to flush a drive in several places but it got pulled and munged. The original model was to flush each time a device was closed, when any partition mount point was released, and called by notifier. In a minimal partition count of 1, you had at least two flush before shutdown or reboot. So it was not the code because I fixed it, but then again I am retiring from formal maintainership. Cheers, Andre Hedrick LAD Storage Consulting Group On Sat, 1 Nov 2003, Ville Herva wrote: > On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 08:01:14PM +0100, you [Willy Tarreau] wrote: > > On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 08:25:18PM +0200, Ville Herva wrote: > > > > > Is there anything special in booting to DOS instead of different linux > > > kernel, other than that it would rule out some strange kernel bug that is > > > present in 2.2 and 2.4? > > > > No, it was just to quicky confirm or deny the fact that it's the kernel > > which causes the problem. It could have been a long standing bug in the IDE > > or partition code, and which is present in several kernels. > > I vaguely recall some ide write cache flushing code was fixed some time ago, > but I can't find it in the archives. Maybe I dreamed that up. But I still > wonder why an otherwise idle drive would hold the data in write cache for so > long (several minutes.) > > > But as you say that it affects two different controllers, there's little > > chance that it's caused by anything except linux itself. > > Unless the drive is buggy wrt. flushing its write cache. But I think it's > a quite distant possibility. > > > Then, the reboot on DOS will only tell you if the drives were corrupted at > > startup or at shutdown. > > Yep. I'll try to find the moment to boot the beast into something else than > the current kernel / distro (it could in theory be something in userspace, > though I cannot think what). > > > > BTW: the corruption happens on warm reboots (running reboot command), not > > > just on power off / on. > > > > OK, but the BIOS scans your disks even during warm reboots. > > True, I mainly made this note because I hadn't mentioned it before in the > thread, and I thought it might have some relevance wrt. possible ide write > caching problems. I didn't mean it as a response to the BIOS theory. > > > -- v -- > > v@iki.fi > - > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ >