dm thin: fix pool_io_hints to avoid looking at max_hw_sectors
authorMike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
Thu, 20 Nov 2014 23:07:43 +0000 (18:07 -0500)
committerMike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
Fri, 21 Nov 2014 17:54:23 +0000 (12:54 -0500)
commitd200c30ef00dd03aec6f1aeaac1546c6e515cbc0
treed88a4b7b8f924a81266307d4c1df6c07f18bc583
parent583024d248f486e21479d1912aa2093565455770
dm thin: fix pool_io_hints to avoid looking at max_hw_sectors

Simplify the pool_io_hints code that works to establish a max_sectors
value that is a power-of-2 factor of the thin-pool's blocksize.  The
biggest associated improvement is that the DM thin-pool is no longer
concerning itself with the data device's max_hw_sectors when adjusting
max_sectors.

This fixes the relative fragility of the original "dm thin: adjust
max_sectors_kb based on thinp blocksize" commit that only became
apparent when testing was performed using a DM thin-pool ontop of a
virtio_blk device.  One proposed upstream patch detailed the problems
inherent in virtio_blk: https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/11/20/611

So even though virtio_blk incorrectly set its max_hw_sectors it actually
helped make it clear that we need DM thinp to be tolerant of any future
Linux driver that incorrectly sets max_hw_sectors.

We only need to be concerned with modifying the thin-pool device's
max_sectors limit if it is smaller than the thin-pool's blocksize.  In
this case the value of max_sectors does become a limiting factor when
upper layers (e.g. filesystems) construct their bios.  But if the
hardware can support IOs larger than the thin-pool's blocksize the user
is encouraged to adjust the thin-pool's data device's max_sectors
accordingly -- doing so will enable the thin-pool to inherit the
established user-defined max_sectors.

Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
drivers/md/dm-thin.c