} -----Original Message-----
} From: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org [mailto:linux-raid-
} owner@vger.kernel.org] On Behalf Of David Lethe
} Sent: Saturday, May 17, 2008 3:10 PM
} To: LinuxRaid; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
} Subject: Mechanism to safely force repair of single md stripe w/o hurting
} data integrity of file system
}
} I'm trying to figure out a mechanism to safely repair a stripe of data
} when I know a particular disk has a unrecoverable read error at a
} certain physical block (for 2.6 kernels)
}
} My original plan was to figure out the range of blocks in md device that
} utilizes the known bad block and force a raw read on physical device
} that covers the entire chunk and let the md driver do all of the work.
}
} Well, this didn't pan out. Problems include issues where if bad block
} maps to the parity block in a stripe then md won't necessarily
} read/verify parity, and in cases where you are running RAID1, then load
} balancing might result in the kernel reading the bad block from the good
} disk.
}
} So the degree of difficulty is much higher than I expected. I prefer
} not to patch kernels due to maintenance issues as well as desire for the
} technique to work across numerous kernels and patch revisions, and
} frankly, the odds are I would screw it up. An application-level program
} that can be invoked as necessary would be ideal.
}
} As such, anybody up to the challenge of writing the code? I want it
} enough to paypal somebody $500 who can write it, and will gladly open
} source the solution.
}
} (And to clarify why, I know physical block x on disk y is bad before the
} O/S reads the block, and just want to rebuild the stripe, not the entire
} md device when this happens. I must not compromise any file system data,
} cached or non-cached that is built on the md device. I have system with
} >100TB and if I did a rebuild every time I discovered a bad block
} somewhere, then a full parity repair would never complete before another
} physical bad block is discovered.)
}
} Contact me offline for the financial details, but I would certainly
} appreciate some thread discussion on an appropriate architecture. At
} least it is my opinion that such capability should eventually be native
} Linux, but as long as there is a program that can be run on demand that
} doesn't require rebuilding or patching kernels then that is all I need.
}
} David @ santools.com
I thought this would cause md to read all blocks in an array:
echo repair > /sys/block/md0/md/sync_action
And rewrite any blocks that can't be read.
In the old days, md would kick out a disk on a read error. When you added
it back, md would rewrite everything on that disk, which corrected read
errors.
Guy
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