Date:   Tue, 23 Jun 2020 10:19:03 +0200
From:   Roger Pau Monné <roger.pau@...rix.com>
To:     Anchal Agarwal <anchalag@...zon.com>
CC:     Boris Ostrovsky <boris.ostrovsky@...cle.com>,
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Subject: Re: [PATCH 06/12] xen-blkfront: add callbacks for PM suspend and
 hibernation]

On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 12:43:14AM +0000, Anchal Agarwal wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 22, 2020 at 10:38:46AM +0200, Roger Pau Monné wrote:
> > CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you can confirm the sender and know the content is safe.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 11:43:12PM +0000, Anchal Agarwal wrote:
> > > On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 10:35:28AM +0200, Roger Pau Monné wrote:
> > > > CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you can confirm the sender and know the content is safe.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 09:49:25PM +0000, Anchal Agarwal wrote:
> > > > > On Thu, Jun 04, 2020 at 09:05:48AM +0200, Roger Pau Monné wrote:
> > > > > > CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you can confirm the sender and know the content is safe.
> > > > > > On Wed, Jun 03, 2020 at 11:33:52PM +0000, Agarwal, Anchal wrote:
> > > > > > >  CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you can confirm the sender and know the content is safe.
> > > > > > >     > +             xenbus_dev_error(dev, err, "Freezing timed out;"
> > > > > > >     > +                              "the device may become inconsistent state");
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >     Leaving the device in this state is quite bad, as it's in a closed
> > > > > > >     state and with the queues frozen. You should make an attempt to
> > > > > > >     restore things to a working state.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > You mean if backend closed after timeout? Is there a way to know that? I understand it's not good to
> > > > > > > leave it in this state however, I am still trying to find if there is a good way to know if backend is still connected after timeout.
> > > > > > > Hence the message " the device may become inconsistent state".  I didn't see a timeout not even once on my end so that's why
> > > > > > > I may be looking for an alternate perspective here. may be need to thaw everything back intentionally is one thing I could think of.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > You can manually force this state, and then check that it will behave
> > > > > > correctly. I would expect that on a failure to disconnect from the
> > > > > > backend you should switch the frontend to the 'Init' state in order to
> > > > > > try to reconnect to the backend when possible.
> > > > > >
> > > > > From what I understand forcing manually is, failing the freeze without
> > > > > disconnect and try to revive the connection by unfreezing the
> > > > > queues->reconnecting to backend [which never got diconnected]. May be even
> > > > > tearing down things manually because I am not sure what state will frontend
> > > > > see if backend fails to to disconnect at any point in time. I assumed connected.
> > > > > Then again if its "CONNECTED" I may not need to tear down everything and start
> > > > > from Initialising state because that may not work.
> > > > >
> > > > > So I am not so sure about backend's state so much, lets say if  xen_blkif_disconnect fail,
> > > > > I don't see it getting handled in the backend then what will be backend's state?
> > > > > Will it still switch xenbus state to 'Closed'? If not what will frontend see,
> > > > > if it tries to read backend's state through xenbus_read_driver_state ?
> > > > >
> > > > > So the flow be like:
> > > > > Front end marks XenbusStateClosing
> > > > > Backend marks its state as XenbusStateClosing
> > > > >     Frontend marks XenbusStateClosed
> > > > >     Backend disconnects calls xen_blkif_disconnect
> > > > >        Backend fails to disconnect, the above function returns EBUSY
> > > > >        What will be state of backend here?
> > > >
> > > > Backend should stay in state 'Closing' then, until it can finish
> > > > tearing down.
> > > >
> > > It disconnects the ring after switching to connected state too.
> > > > >        Frontend did not tear down the rings if backend does not switches the
> > > > >        state to 'Closed' in case of failure.
> > > > >
> > > > > If backend stays in CONNECTED state, then even if we mark it Initialised in frontend, backend
> > > >
> > > > Backend will stay in state 'Closing' I think.
> > > >
> > > > > won't be calling connect(). {From reading code in frontend_changed}
> > > > > IMU, Initialising will fail since backend dev->state != XenbusStateClosed plus
> > > > > we did not tear down anything so calling talk_to_blkback may not be needed
> > > > >
> > > > > Does that sound correct?
> > > >
> > > > I think switching to the initial state in order to try to attempt a
> > > > reconnection would be our best bet here.
> > > >
> > > It does not seems to work correctly, I get hung tasks all over and all the
> > > requests to filesystem gets stuck. Backend does shows the state as connected
> > > after xenbus_dev_suspend fails but I think there may be something missing.
> > > I don't seem to get IO interrupts thereafter i.e hitting the function blkif_interrupts.
> > > I think just marking it initialised may not be the only thing.
> > > Here is a short description of what I am trying to do:
> > > So, on timeout:
> > >     Switch XenBusState to "Initialized"
> > >     unquiesce/unfreeze the queues and return
> > >     mark info->connected = BLKIF_STATE_CONNECTED
> > 
> > If xenbus state is Initialized isn't it wrong to set info->connected
> > == CONNECTED?
> >
> Yes, you are right earlier I was marking it explicitly but that was not right,
> the connect path for blkfront will do that.
> > You should tear down all the internal state (like a proper close)?
> > 
> Isn't that similar to disconnecting in the first place that failed during
> freeze? Do you mean re-try to close but this time re-connect after close
> basically do everything you would at "restore"?

Last time I checked blkfront supported reconnections (ie: disconnect
from a backend and connect again). I was assuming we could apply the
same here on timeout, and just follow the same path where the frontend
waits indefinitely for the backend to close and then attempts to
reconnect.

> Also, I experimented with that and it works intermittently. I want to take a
> step back on this issue and ask few questions here:
> 1. Is fixing this recovery a blocker for me sending in a V2 version?

At the end of day it's your feature. I would certainly prefer for it
to work as good as possible, this being a recovery in case of failure
just make sure it does something sane (ie: crash/close the frontend)
and add a TODO note.

> 2. In our 2-3 years of supporting this feature at large scale we haven't seen this issue
> where backend fails to disconnect. What we are trying to do here is create a
> hypothetical situation where we leave backend in Closing state and try and see how it
> recovers. The reason why I think it "may not" occur and the timeout of 5HZ is
> sufficient is because we haven't come across even a single use-case where it
> caused hibernation to fail.
> The reason why I think "it may" occur is if we are running a really memory
> intensive workload and ring is busy and is unable to complete all the requests
> in the given timeout. This is very unlikely though.

As said above I would generally prefer for code to handle possible
failures the best way, and hence I think here it would be nice to
fallback to the normal disconnect path and just wait for the backend
to close.

You likely have this very well tuned to your own environment and
workloads, since this will now be upstream others might have more
contended systems where it could start to fail.

> 3) Also, I do not think this may be straight forward to fix and expect
> hibernation to work flawlessly in subsequent invocations. I am open to 
> all suggestions.

Right, adding a TODO would seem appropriate then.

Roger.

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