[Xen-devel] [RFC PATCH] Data integrity extension support for xen-block

[Bob Liu <bob.liu@xxxxxxxxxx>]

* What's data integrity extension and why?
Modern filesystems feature checksumming of data and metadata to protect against
data corruption.  However, the detection of the corruption is done at read time
which could potentially be months after the data was written.  At that point the
original data that the application tried to write is most likely lost.

The solution in Linux is the data integrity framework which enables protection
information to be pinned to I/Os and sent to/received from controllers that
support it. struct bio has been extended with a pointer to a struct bip which
in turn contains the integrity metadata. The bip is essentially a trimmed down
bio with a bio_vec and some housekeeping.

* Issues when xen-block get involved.
xen-blkfront only transmits the normal data of struct bio while the integrity
metadata buffer(struct bio_integrity_payload in each bio) is ignored.

* Proposal of transmitting bio integrity payload.
Adding an extra request following the normal data request, this extra request
contains the integrity payload.
The xen-blkback will reconstruct an new bio with both received normal data and
integrity metadata.

Welcome any better ideas, thank you!

[1] http://lwn.net/Articles/280023/
[2] https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/block/data-integrity.txt

Signed-off-by: Bob Liu <bob.liu@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
 xen/include/public/io/blkif.h |   50 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 50 insertions(+)

diff --git a/xen/include/public/io/blkif.h b/xen/include/public/io/blkif.h
index 99f0326..3d8d39f 100644
--- a/xen/include/public/io/blkif.h
+++ b/xen/include/public/io/blkif.h
@@ -635,6 +635,28 @@
 #define BLKIF_OP_INDIRECT          6
 
 /*
+ * Recognized only if "feature-extra-request" is present in backend xenbus 
info.
+ * A request with BLKIF_OP_EXTRA_FLAG indicates an extra request is followed
+ * in the shared ring buffer.
+ *
+ * By this way, extra data like bio integrity payload can be transmitted from
+ * frontend to backend.
+ *
+ * The 'wire' format is like:
+ *  Request 1: xen_blkif_request
+ * [Request 2: xen_blkif_extra_request]    (only if request 1 has 
BLKIF_OP_EXTRA_FLAG)
+ *  Request 3: xen_blkif_request
+ *  Request 4: xen_blkif_request
+ * [Request 5: xen_blkif_extra_request]    (only if request 4 has 
BLKIF_OP_EXTRA_FLAG)
+ *  ...
+ *  Request N: xen_blkif_request
+ *
+ * If a backend does not recognize BLKIF_OP_EXTRA_FLAG, it should *not* create 
the
+ * "feature-extra-request" node!
+ */
+#define BLKIF_OP_EXTRA_FLAG (0x80)
+
+/*
  * Maximum scatter/gather segments per request.
  * This is carefully chosen so that sizeof(blkif_ring_t) <= PAGE_SIZE.
  * NB. This could be 12 if the ring indexes weren't stored in the same page.
@@ -703,6 +725,34 @@ struct blkif_request_indirect {
 };
 typedef struct blkif_request_indirect blkif_request_indirect_t;
 
+enum blkif_extra_request_type {
+       BLKIF_EXTRA_TYPE_DIX = 1,               /* Data integrity extension 
payload.  */
+};
+
+struct bio_integrity_req {
+       /*
+        * Grant mapping for transmitting bio integrity payload to backend.
+        */
+       grant_ref_t *gref;
+       unsigned int nr_grefs;
+       unsigned int len;
+};
+
+/*
+ * Extra request, must follow a normal-request and a normal-request can
+ * only be followed by one extra request.
+ */
+struct blkif_request_extra {
+       uint8_t type;           /* BLKIF_EXTRA_TYPE_* */
+       uint16_t _pad1;
+#ifndef CONFIG_X86_32
+       uint32_t _pad2;         /* offsetof(blkif_...,u.extra.id) == 8 */
+#endif
+       uint64_t id;
+       struct bio_integrity_req bi_req;
+} __attribute__((__packed__));
+typedef struct blkif_request_extra blkif_request_extra_t;
+
 struct blkif_response {
     uint64_t        id;              /* copied from request */
     uint8_t         operation;       /* copied from request */
-- 
1.7.10.4


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