In preparation for fixing the BLK path to properly use "directed
pcommit" enable the unit test infrastructure to emit mock "flush"
tables. Writes to these flush addresses trigger a memory controller to
flush its internal buffers to persistent media, similar to the x86
"pcommit" instruction.
Signed-off-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
The implementation for the new "DIMM Flags" DSM relies on the -ENOTTY
return code to indicate that the flags are unimplimented and to fall
back to a safe default. As is the -ENXIO error code erroneoously
indicates to fail enabling a BLK region.
Signed-off-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
In the 4.2-rc1 merge the default_memremap_pmem() implementation switched
from ioremap_nocache() to ioremap_wt(). Add it to the list of mocked
routines to restore the ability to run the unit tests.
Signed-off-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Upon detection of an unarmed dimm in a region, arrange for descendant
BTT, PMEM, or BLK instances to be read-only. A dimm is primarily marked
"unarmed" via flags passed by platform firmware (NFIT).
The flags in the NFIT memory device sub-structure indicate the state of
the data on the nvdimm relative to its energy source or last "flush to
persistence". For the most part there is nothing the driver can do but
advertise the state of these flags in sysfs and emit a message if
firmware indicates that the contents of the device may be corrupted.
However, for the case of ACPI_NFIT_MEM_ARMED, the driver can arrange for
the block devices incorporating that nvdimm to be marked read-only.
This is a safe default as the data is still available and new writes are
held off until the administrator either forces read-write mode, or the
energy source becomes armed.
A 'read_only' attribute is added to REGION devices to allow for
overriding the default read-only policy of all descendant block devices.
Signed-off-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
'libnvdimm' is the first driver sub-system in the kernel to implement
mocking for unit test coverage. The nfit_test module gets built as an
external module and arranges for external module replacements of nfit,
libnvdimm, nd_pmem, and nd_blk. These replacements use the linker
--wrap option to redirect calls to ioremap() + request_mem_region() to
custom defined unit test resources. The end result is a fully
functional nvdimm_bus, as far as userspace is concerned, but with the
capability to perform otherwise destructive tests on emulated resources.
Q: Why not use QEMU for this emulation?
QEMU is not suitable for unit testing. QEMU's role is to faithfully
emulate the platform. A unit test's role is to unfaithfully implement
the platform with the goal of triggering bugs in the corners of the
sub-system implementation. As bugs are discovered in platforms, or the
sub-system itself, the unit tests are extended to backstop a fix with a
reproducer unit test.
Another problem with QEMU is that it would require coordination of 3
software projects instead of 2 (kernel + libndctl [1]) to maintain and
execute the tests. The chances for bit rot and the difficulty of
getting the tests running goes up non-linearly the more components
involved.
Q: Why submit this to the kernel tree instead of external modules in
libndctl?
Simple, to alleviate the same risk that out-of-tree external modules
face. Updates to drivers/nvdimm/ can be immediately evaluated to see if
they have any impact on tools/testing/nvdimm/.
Q: What are the negative implications of merging this?
It is a unique maintenance burden because the purpose of mocking an
interface to enable a unit test is to purposefully short circuit the
semantics of a routine to enable testing. For example
__wrap_ioremap_cache() fakes the pmem driver into "ioremap()'ing" a test
resource buffer allocated by dma_alloc_coherent(). The future
maintenance burden hits when someone changes the semantics of
ioremap_cache() and wonders what the implications are for the unit test.
[1]: https://github.com/pmem/ndctl
Cc: <linux-acpi@vger.kernel.org>
Cc: Lv Zheng <lv.zheng@intel.com>
Cc: Robert Moore <robert.moore@intel.com>
Cc: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Signed-off-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Dan Williams