linux-imx

MD: raid5 trim support


Discard for raid4/5/6 has limitation. If discard request size is
small, we do discard for one disk, but we need calculate parity and
write parity disk.  To correctly calculate parity, zero_after_discard
must be guaranteed. Even it's true, we need do discard for one disk
but write another disks, which makes the parity disks wear out
fast. This doesn't make sense. So an efficient discard for raid4/5/6
should discard all data disks and parity disks, which requires the
write pattern to be (A, A+chunk_size, A+chunk_size*2...). If A's size
is smaller than chunk_size, such pattern is almost impossible in
practice. So in this patch, I only handle the case that A's size
equals to chunk_size. That is discard request should be aligned to
stripe size and its size is multiple of stripe size.

Since we can only handle request with specific alignment and size (or
part of the request fitting stripes), we can't guarantee
zero_after_discard even zero_after_discard is true in low level
drives.

The block layer doesn't send down correctly aligned requests even
correct discard alignment is set, so I must filter out.

For raid4/5/6 parity calculation, if data is 0, parity is 0. So if
zero_after_discard is true for all disks, data is consistent after
discard.  Otherwise, data might be lost. Let's consider a scenario:
discard a stripe, write data to one disk and write parity disk. The
stripe could be still inconsistent till then depending on using data
from other data disks or parity disks to calculate new parity. If the
disk is broken, we can't restore it. So in this patch, we only enable
discard support if all disks have zero_after_discard.

If discard fails in one disk, we face the similar inconsistent issue
above. The patch will make discard follow the same path as normal
write request. If discard fails, a resync will be scheduled to make
the data consistent. This isn't good to have extra writes, but data
consistency is important.

If a subsequent read/write request hits raid5 cache of a discarded
stripe, the discarded dev page should have zero filled, so the data is
consistent. This patch will always zero dev page for discarded request
stripe. This isn't optimal because discard request doesn't need such
payload. Next patch will avoid it.

Signed-off-by: Shaohua Li <shli@fusionio.com>
Signed-off-by: NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de>