linux-ext4 - Re: Block device flush ordering

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Date:   Tue, 15 Jan 2019 09:35:41 -0500
From:   Kurt Miller <kurt@...ricatesoftware.com>
To:     Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
        Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com>
Cc:     linux-xfs@...r.kernel.org, linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-block@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Block device flush ordering

On Mon, 2019-01-14 at 08:45 -0800, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 14, 2019 at 09:42:44AM +1100, Dave Chinner wrote:
> > 
> > On Thu, Jan 10, 2019 at 09:30:01AM -0500, Kurt Miller wrote:
> > > 
> > > For a well behaved block device that has a writeback cache,
> > > what is the proper behavior of flush when there are more
> > > then one outstanding flush operations? Is it;
> > > 
> > > Flush all writes seen since the last flush.
> > > or
> > > Flush all writes received prior to the flush including
> > > those before any prior flush.
> The requirement is that all write operations that have been completed
> before the flush was seen are on stable storage.  How that is
> implemented in detail is up to the device.  The typical implementation
> is simply to writeback the whole cache everytime a flush operation
> is received.
> 
> > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > For example take the following order of requests presented
> > > to the block device:
> > > 
> > > 	writes 1-5
> > > 	flush 1
> > > 	write 6
> > > 	flush 2
> > > 
> > > Can flush 2 finish with success as soon as write 6 is flushed
> > > (which may be before flush 1 success)? Or must it wait for
> > > all prior write operations to flush (writes 1-6)?
> No.  For all the usual protocols as well as the linux kernel semantics
> there is no overall command ordering, especially as there is no way
> to even enforce that in a multi-queue environment.
> 
> > 
> > 
> >  * C1. At any given time, only one flush shall be in progress.  This makes
> >  *     double buffering sufficient.
> Very specific implementation detail inside the request layer.
> 
> > 
> > Then flush 1 does not guarantee any of the writes are on stable
> > storage. They *may* be on stable storage if the timing is right, but
> > it is not guaranteed by the OS code. Likewise, flush 2 only
> > guarantees writes 1, 3 and 5 are on stable storage becase they are
> > the only writes that have been signalled as complete when flush 2
> > was submitted.
> Exactly.

Thank you both for the detailed answers. They have been very helpful.
Also after spending an afternoon reading kernel code (xlog_sync though
blk_flush_complete_seq) I understand it better. The multiple concurrent
flush requests comment I made in another reply was a logging issue in
our nbd implementation where we were logging completions after replying
to the kernel. As a result our log messages were out of order and
misleading. With that corrected in our code we see only one flush at a
time.

Best,
-Kurt