Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH for-2.6 2/2] block/gluster: prevent data loss after i/o error

[Kevin Wolf]

[ Adding some CCs ]

Am 06.04.2016 um 05:29 hat Jeff Cody geschrieben:
> Upon receiving an I/O error after an fsync, by default gluster will
> dump its cache.  However, QEMU will retry the fsync, which is especially
> useful when encountering errors such as ENOSPC when using the werror=stop
> option.  When using caching with gluster, however, the last written data
> will be lost upon encountering ENOSPC.  Using the cache xlator option of
> 'resync-failed-syncs-after-fsync' should cause gluster to retain the
> cached data after a failed fsync, so that ENOSPC and other transient
> errors are recoverable.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Jeff Cody <address@hidden>
> ---
>  block/gluster.c | 27 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  configure       |  8 ++++++++
>  2 files changed, 35 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/block/gluster.c b/block/gluster.c
> index 30a827e..b1cf71b 100644
> --- a/block/gluster.c
> +++ b/block/gluster.c
> @@ -330,6 +330,23 @@ static int qemu_gluster_open(BlockDriverState *bs,  
> QDict *options,
>          goto out;
>      }
>  
> +#ifdef CONFIG_GLUSTERFS_XLATOR_OPT
> +    /* Without this, if fsync fails for a recoverable reason (for instance,
> +     * ENOSPC), gluster will dump its cache, preventing retries.  This means
> +     * almost certain data loss.  Not all gluster versions support the
> +     * 'resync-failed-syncs-after-fsync' key value, but there is no way to
> +     * discover during runtime if it is supported (this api returns success 
> for
> +     * unknown key/value pairs) */

Honestly, this sucks. There is apparently no way to operate gluster so
we can safely recover after a failed fsync. "We hope everything is fine,
but depending on your gluster version, we may now corrupt your image"
isn't very good.

We need to consider very carefully if this is good enough to go on after
an error. I'm currently leaning towards "no". That is, we should only
enable this after Gluster provides us a way to make sure that the option
is really set.

> +    ret = glfs_set_xlator_option (s->glfs, "*-write-behind",
> +                                           "resync-failed-syncs-after-fsync",
> +                                           "on");
> +    if (ret < 0) {
> +        error_setg_errno(errp, errno, "Unable to set xlator key/value pair");
> +        ret = -errno;
> +        goto out;
> +    }
> +#endif

We also need to consider the case without CONFIG_GLUSTERFS_XLATOR_OPT.
In this case (as well as theoretically in the case that the option
didn't take effect - if only we could know about it), a failed
glfs_fsync_async() is fatal and we need to stop operating on the image,
i.e. set bs->drv = NULL like when we detect corruption in qcow2 images.
The guest will see a broken disk that fails all I/O requests, but that's
better than corrupting data.

Kevin