Problem:
The Linux kernel takes a logical volume offline after a LUN reset. This is
generally accompanied by this message in the dmesg output:
Device offlined - not ready after error recovery
Root Cause:
The root cause is a "quirk" in the timeout handling in the Linux SCSI
layer. The Linux kernel places a 30-second timeout on most media access
commands (reads and writes) that it send to device drivers. When a media
access command times out, the Linux kernel goes into error recovery mode
for the LUN that was the target of the command that timed out. Every
command that timed out is kept on a list inside of the Linux kernel to be
retried later. The kernel attempts to recover the command(s) that timed out
by issuing a LUN reset followed by a TEST UNIT READY. If the LUN reset and
TEST UNIT READY commands are successful, the kernel retries the command(s)
that timed out.
Each SCSI command issued by the kernel has a result field associated with
it. This field indicates the final result of the command (success or
error). When a command times out, the kernel places a value in this result
field indicating that the command timed out.
The "quirk" is that after the LUN reset and TEST UNIT READY commands are
completed, the kernel checks each command on the timed-out command list
before retrying it. If the result field is still "timed out", the kernel
treats that command as not having been successfully recovered for a
retry. If the number of commands that are in this state are greater than
two, the kernel takes the LUN offline.
Fix:
When our RAIDStack receives a LUN reset, it simply waits until all
outstanding commands complete. Generally, all of these outstanding commands
complete successfully. Therefore, the fix in the smartpqi driver is to
always set the command result field to indicate success when a request
completes successfully. This normally isn’t necessary because the result
field is always initialized to success when the command is submitted to the
driver. So when the command completes successfully, the result field is
left untouched. But in this case, the kernel changes the result field
behind the driver’s back and then expects the field to be changed by the
driver as the commands that timed-out complete.
Reviewed-by: Dave Carroll <david.carroll@microsemi.com>
Reviewed-by: Scott Teel <scott.teel@microsemi.com>
Signed-off-by: Kevin Barnett <kevin.barnett@microsemi.com>
Signed-off-by: Don Brace <don.brace@microsemi.com>
Signed-off-by: Martin K. Petersen <martin.petersen@oracle.com>
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