It has come to my attention (thanks Martin) that 'discard_zeroes_data'
is only a hint. Some devices in some cases don't do what it
says on the label.
The use of DISCARD in RAID5 depends on reads from discarded regions
being predictably zero. If a write to a previously discarded region
performs a read-modify-write cycle it assumes that the parity block
was consistent with the data blocks. If all were zero, this would
be the case. If some are and some aren't this would not be the case.
This could lead to data corruption after a device failure when
data needs to be reconstructed from the parity.
As we cannot trust 'discard_zeroes_data', ignore it by default
and so disallow DISCARD on all raid4/5/6 arrays.
As many devices are trustworthy, and as there are benefits to using
DISCARD, add a module parameter to over-ride this caution and cause
DISCARD to work if discard_zeroes_data is set.
If a site want to enable DISCARD on some arrays but not on others they
should select DISCARD support at the filesystem level, and set the
raid456 module parameter.
raid456.devices_handle_discard_safely=Y
As this is a data-safety issue, I believe this patch is suitable for
-stable.
DISCARD support for RAID456 was added in 3.7
Cc: Shaohua Li <shli@kernel.org>
Cc: "Martin K. Petersen" <martin.petersen@oracle.com>
Cc: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
Cc: Heinz Mauelshagen <heinzm@redhat.com>
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org (3.7+)
Acked-by: Martin K. Petersen <martin.petersen@oracle.com>
Acked-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
Fixes: 620125f2bf
Signed-off-by: NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de>
8e0e99ba64