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@@ -79,6 +79,38 @@ These filesystems may be used for inspiration:
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- ext4: the fourth extended filesystem, see Documentation/filesystems/ext4.txt
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+Handling Media Errors
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+---------------------
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+
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+The libnvdimm subsystem stores a record of known media error locations for
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+each pmem block device (in gendisk->badblocks). If we fault at such location,
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+or one with a latent error not yet discovered, the application can expect
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+to receive a SIGBUS. Libnvdimm also allows clearing of these errors by simply
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+writing the affected sectors (through the pmem driver, and if the underlying
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+NVDIMM supports the clear_poison DSM defined by ACPI).
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+
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+Since DAX IO normally doesn't go through the driver/bio path, applications or
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+sysadmins have an option to restore the lost data from a prior backup/inbuilt
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+redundancy in the following ways:
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+
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+1. Delete the affected file, and restore from a backup (sysadmin route):
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+ This will free the file system blocks that were being used by the file,
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+ and the next time they're allocated, they will be zeroed first, which
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+ happens through the driver, and will clear bad sectors.
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+
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+2. Truncate or hole-punch the part of the file that has a bad-block (at least
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+ an entire aligned sector has to be hole-punched, but not necessarily an
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+ entire filesystem block).
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+
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+These are the two basic paths that allow DAX filesystems to continue operating
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+in the presence of media errors. More robust error recovery mechanisms can be
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+built on top of this in the future, for example, involving redundancy/mirroring
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+provided at the block layer through DM, or additionally, at the filesystem
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+level. These would have to rely on the above two tenets, that error clearing
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+can happen either by sending an IO through the driver, or zeroing (also through
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+the driver).
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+
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+
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Shortcomings
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------------
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