diff options
author | Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org> | 2010-12-08 20:57:37 +0100 |
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committer | Jens Axboe <jaxboe@fusionio.com> | 2010-12-16 17:53:38 +0100 |
commit | 77ea887e433ad8389d416826936c110fa7910f80 (patch) | |
tree | ac9d32aabcebf5a465acae2066b12c9335b5ca6f /Documentation/ManagementStyle | |
parent | d2bf1b6723ed0eab378363649d15b7893bf14e91 (diff) |
implement in-kernel gendisk events handling
Currently, media presence polling for removeable block devices is done
from userland. There are several issues with this.
* Polling is done by periodically opening the device. For SCSI
devices, the command sequence generated by such action involves a
few different commands including TEST_UNIT_READY. This behavior,
while perfectly legal, is different from Windows which only issues
single command, GET_EVENT_STATUS_NOTIFICATION. Unfortunately, some
ATAPI devices lock up after being periodically queried such command
sequences.
* There is no reliable and unintrusive way for a userland program to
tell whether the target device is safe for media presence polling.
For example, polling for media presence during an on-going burning
session can make it fail. The polling program can avoid this by
opening the device with O_EXCL but then it risks making a valid
exclusive user of the device fail w/ -EBUSY.
* Userland polling is unnecessarily heavy and in-kernel implementation
is lighter and better coordinated (workqueue, timer slack).
This patch implements framework for in-kernel disk event handling,
which includes media presence polling.
* bdops->check_events() is added, which supercedes ->media_changed().
It should check whether there's any pending event and return if so.
Currently, two events are defined - DISK_EVENT_MEDIA_CHANGE and
DISK_EVENT_EJECT_REQUEST. ->check_events() is guaranteed not to be
called parallelly.
* gendisk->events and ->async_events are added. These should be
initialized by block driver before passing the device to add_disk().
The former contains the mask of all supported events and the latter
the mask of all events which the device can report without polling.
/sys/block/*/events[_async] export these to userland.
* Kernel parameter block.events_dfl_poll_msecs controls the system
polling interval (default is 0 which means disable) and
/sys/block/*/events_poll_msecs control polling intervals for
individual devices (default is -1 meaning use system setting). Note
that if a device can report all supported events asynchronously and
its polling interval isn't explicitly set, the device won't be
polled regardless of the system polling interval.
* If a device is opened exclusively with write access, event checking
is automatically disabled until all write exclusive accesses are
released.
* There are event 'clearing' events. For example, both of currently
defined events are cleared after the device has been successfully
opened. This information is passed to ->check_events() callback
using @clearing argument as a hint.
* Event checking is always performed from system_nrt_wq and timer
slack is set to 25% for polling.
* Nothing changes for drivers which implement ->media_changed() but
not ->check_events(). Going forward, all drivers will be converted
to ->check_events() and ->media_change() will be dropped.
Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Cc: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@vrfy.org>
Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jaxboe@fusionio.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/ManagementStyle')
0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions