Changes in v4:
- Patch 1: added the Fixes tag (Damien Le Moal), and the Reviewed-by tags
from Hannes Reinecke (given on v1; the code is unchanged since) and
Damien Le Moal.
- Patch 2: added Damien Le Moal's Reviewed-by.
- Patch 3: re-arm the idle poll in dmz_schedule_reclaim() instead of
open-coding it at the end of dmz_reclaim_work(), as Damien suggested.
The new branch uses queue_delayed_work(), so zone allocations and
"reclaim" messages leave an already pending poll or immediate reclaim
alone.
- Rebased on v7.3-rc7 and tested there (see below).
Mikulas: patchwork shows v3 as accepted. If v3 is already in your tree, I
can send the patch 3 change and the Fixes tag as follow-up patches
instead; please tell me which you prefer.
Changes in v3:
- Patch 2: reworded the comment and dropped the redundant
dmz_nr_cache_zones() test (Damien Le Moal).
Changes in v2:
- No code changes; only my author address changed.
These patches fix two problems in dm-zoned's reclaim worker, found while
running md RAID5 on three dm-zoned targets on 27 TB host-managed SMR drives
(WD Ultrastar DC HC680), each target with a regular cache device.
1. On a target with cache zones and no free sequential zone, an idle
target keeps copying random zones into other random zones, forever
(patch 2; patch 1 makes the resulting -ENOSPC back off instead of
spinning). After a full md rebuild every chunk is mapped, so this
happens right after a rebuild: the idle member read and wrote about
72 MB/s nonstop for hours.
2. After a reclaim pass that ends while the target is busy, the idle poll
is never re-armed, so zones filled under load are not reclaimed when the
target goes idle (patch 3). Users notice it as "the buffer never drains";
the workaround has been a timer sending "dmsetup message <dev> 0 reclaim".
Testing on v7.3-rc7 (kernel built from the tag, in a VM):
- reproducer with no special hardware (scsi_debug zbc=managed, 64 MiB
zones, plus a 1 GiB loop cache device), idle target with no free
sequential zone, 120 s: stock module 500-660 MB/s of read and the same
of write in two runs, zone counters unchanged; with this series 0 MB/s:
https://github.com/illofspeed/synology-host-managed-smr/tree/main/repro
- a small md RAID5 of three dm-zoned targets on emulated host-managed
drives (tcmu-runner ZBC handler), LUKS and XFS on top: module swapped in
and out with the files' checksums verified each time; after a 2 GiB
write burst the filled random zones of all three targets were reclaimed
within two minutes of going idle, with no "reclaim" message.
Earlier versions of the series have run on 7.2.6 on the three real drives
since 2026-10-05; the v4 form of patch 3 has not run there yet.
Related, not addressed here: the double-free in dmz_load_sb() reported on
dm-devel on 2026-05-30. Also not addressed: a "reclaim" message sent to a
suspended target can already queue reclaim today when reclaim is needed;
with patch 3 it can also queue the idle poll. If you would rather avoid
that, I can keep the re-arm at the end of dmz_reclaim_work() instead (as
in v3, with queue_delayed_work()), or send a separate patch that makes the
message do nothing on a suspended target.
The problems were found and the patches written with the help of an AI
coding assistant (hence Assisted-by); the analysis, the tests and this
description were reviewed by me.
Kyrylo Biryuk (3):
dm zoned: back off when reclaim finds no destination zone
dm zoned: do not reclaim a random zone into another random zone
dm zoned: keep polling for idle reclaim after a reclaim pass
drivers/md/dm-zoned-reclaim.c | 21 +++++++++++++++++++--
1 file changed, 19 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
--
2.47.3