Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:23:49 +0400 | From | Vladislav Bolkhovitin <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 0/6] detect online disk resize |
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Andrew Patterson wrote: > This is version 2 of a patch series I submitted back in May 2008. This > version now checks for device size changes in the rescan_partitions() > routine. Which in turn is called when a device is opened and in the > BLKRRPART ioctl. > > I am resubmitting this patch series as I got little response the > previous time. Al Viro has told me offline that he would look at it this > time. > > This patch series handles online disk resizes that are currently not > completely recognized by the kernel using the existing revalidate_disk > routines. An online resize can occur when growing or shrinking a > Fibre Channel LUN or perhaps by adding a disk to an existing RAID > volume. > > The kernel currently recognizes a device size change when the > lower-level revalidate_disk routines are called; however, the block > layer does not use the new size while it has any current openers on > the device. So, for example, if LVM has an volume open on the device, > you will generally not see the size change until after a reboot. We > fix this problem by creating a wrapper to be used with lower-level > revalidate_disk routines. This wrapper first calls the lower-level > driver's revalidate_disk routine. It then compares the gendisk > capacity to the block devices inode size. If there is a difference, we > adjust the block device's size. If the size has changed, we then flush > the disk for safety. The size is also checked in rescan_partitions > which is called when the device is opened or when the BLKRRPART ioctl > is called. > > There are several ways to "kick off" a device size change: > > 1. For SCSI devices do: > > # echo 1 > /sys/class/scsi_device/<device>/device/rescan > > or > > # blockdev --rereadpt <device file> > > 2. Other devices (not device mapper) > > # blockdev --rereadpt <device file>
It would be great if you extend this functionality to automatic resizing by handling "CAPACITY DATA HAS CHANGED" Unit Attention. If necessary, I can assist in testing by adding online virtual disks resize feature together with generation of that UA in SCST (http://scst.sf.net). (It's not been implemented yet, because no known initiators so far have been able to use this feature.)
Vlad
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