[DRBD-user] "kernel: bio too big device drbd0"

Lars Ellenberg lars.ellenberg at linbit.com
Thu Jun 6 21:12:38 CEST 2013

Note: "permalinks" may not be as permanent as we would like,
direct links of old sources may well be a few messages off.


On Thu, Jun 06, 2013 at 06:30:23PM +0200, Lutz Vieweg wrote:
> On 06/06/2013 02:51 PM, Lars Ellenberg wrote:
> >You did something bad, and that confused the IO stack.
> 
> I would have expected any kind of error message from any of the
> tools I used to increase the device sized if I actually
> did something bad...
> 
> >This causes IO errors.
> 
> Interestingly, while these "kernel: bio too big device drbd0"
> keep coming, no human user or other component of the machine complains
> about any error... so far for ~ one week of intensive usage.
> 
> On 06/06/2013 03:39 PM, Sebastian Riemer wrote:
> >Looks like something in the IO stack above DRBD in the kernel doesn't
> >respect the IO size limits of DRBD.
> >
> >In kernel 3.3 the function "blk_set_stacking_limits()" has been
> >introduced to fix such issues. MD uses this function for example. Before
> >that MD used too small IO limits.
> >
> >Try these commands and repeat them for the devices above:
> >$ cat /sys/block/drbd0/queue/max_sectors_kb
> >$ cat /sys/block/drbd0/queue/max_hw_sectors_kb
> 
> The fascinating results:
> 
> # for i in /sys/block/drbd*/queue/max_sectors_kb ; do echo -n "$i " ; cat $i ; done
> /sys/block/drbd0/queue/max_sectors_kb 128
> /sys/block/drbd1/queue/max_sectors_kb 512
> /sys/block/drbd7/queue/max_sectors_kb 512
> 
> # for i in /sys/block/drbd*/queue/max_hw_sectors_kb ; do echo -n "$i " ; cat $i ; done
> /sys/block/drbd0/queue/max_hw_sectors_kb 128
> /sys/block/drbd1/queue/max_hw_sectors_kb 1024
> /sys/block/drbd7/queue/max_hw_sectors_kb 1024
> 
> >Should be 128 as DRBD has 128 KiB hashing functions and can't do bigger
> >IO because of that. The kernel internally calculates with 512 byte
> >sectors. So 256 sectors are 128 KiB.
> 
> I wonder why only drbd0, which is one of three drbd devices used
> on the machine, shows such a result - and drbd0 is the only device
> that the "bio too big" messages are reported for.
> 
> >Have a look into the kernel source in "block/blk-core.c" and search for
> >"bio too big device" for details. In the function
> >"generic_make_request_checks()" you can see that an IO error is sent to
> >the upper layers in that case ( bio_endio(bio, -EIO) ).
> 
> Yes, so the next layer, which is dm-crypt, should either complain / return
> an error, too, or do some magic to slice the write into pieces, right?
> 
> BTW: This is what I get for the dm-crypt device that sits on top of drbd0:
> /sys/block/dm-9/queue/max_hw_sectors_kb 1024
> /sys/block/dm-9/queue/max_sectors_kb    512

Short term workaround:
cat /sys/block/drbd0/queue/max_hw_sectors_kb > /sys/block/dm-9/queue/max_sectors_kb

that is: limit max_sectors_kb (which is a tunable)
to the currently apparent limits of the lower stack.

That should stop new "too big" bios from being assembled.

Then check the limits below drbd (they may have changed when you where
"messing around" during the resize procedure).

also check for proper stacking when started from scratch.

in fact, only "suspend" then "resume" the dm crypt mapping
should be enough to trigger devicemapper to re-evaluate the
limits of the stack.

but just do the whole drill:
umount, close crypt, down drbd, then start things up again.

Do the limits correctly stack then?

hth,
	Lars

-- 
: Lars Ellenberg
: LINBIT | Your Way to High Availability
: DRBD/HA support and consulting http://www.linbit.com

DRBD® and LINBIT® are registered trademarks of LINBIT, Austria.
__
please don't Cc me, but send to list   --   I'm subscribed



More information about the drbd-user mailing list