So, it turns out that commit 4ef67017 "libmultipath: add update_pathvec_from_dm()" already does most of the hard work of making multipath handle the uninitialized paths that exist during boot, after the switch root, but before the all the coldplug uevents have been processed. The only problem is that this code leaves the paths in a partially initialized state, which doesn't completely get corrected until a reconfigure happens. This patchset makes multipath track these partially initailized paths, and makes sure that they get fully initialized, or removed, as necessary. The first patch is a tangentially related bug I found when trying (unsuccessfully) to recreate multipathd's problem with dropping uninitialized paths. Multipathd was not removing completely missing paths from maps that it found while starting up. The solution I chose was just to make sure that a full reload will happen on these maps, even if a weak reconfigure was requested. However, this means that multipath still completely ignores these missing paths. A side effect of this is that "multipath -l" does not show these paths, even though they exist as part of the multipath table. The full reloads are necessary, to take care of issues that update_pathvec_from_dm() can run into, but we might also want to think about marking these missing paths as INIT_REMOVED, instead of not adding them at all. This would make "multipath -l" still show them, until they actually get removed from the table. Patch 0005 makes sure to fully initialize the paths when their coldplug event occurs, but if the path is already fully initialized in udev, but multipathd finds out about it from update_pathvec_from_dm(), multipath doesn't do anything to finish initializing the path and moving it to INIT_OK, besides waiting for a uevent or a reconfigure. This is probably fine, since the only way I can see for a path to be in this state is for someone to manually remove the path from multipathd monitoring. But if I'm missing some other way that paths could end up in this state, we could try proactively finishing the initalization of INIT_PARTIAL paths that have all their udev information. I'm also kind of on the fence about patch 0006. There is no reason why we have to remove INIT_PARTIAL paths if the multipath device goes away. But if a path is in INIT_PARTIAL for long enough that the multipath device gets removed, then it's likely not a path we want to be monitoring, and if a uevent occurs, we'll add it back, anyway. Also, knowing that INIT_PARTIAL paths are always part of multipath devices does make the code simpler. I've tested these patches both by rebooting with necessary and unnecessary multipath devices in the initramfs and multipathd.service set to make multipathd start up at various points after the switch root, and by manually sending remove uevents to unintialize some paths, and then starting multipathd to test specific combinations of path states. But more testing is always welcome. Benjamin Marzinski (7): multipathd: remove missing paths on startup libmultipath: skip unneeded steps to get path name libmultipath: don't use fallback wwid in update_pathvec_from_dm libmultipath: always set INIT_REMOVED in set_path_removed multipathd: fully initialize paths added by update_pathvec_from_dm multipathd: remove INIT_PARTIAL paths that aren't in a multipath device multipathd: Remove dependency on systemd-udev-settle.service libmultipath/configure.c | 2 ++ libmultipath/devmapper.c | 2 ++ libmultipath/discovery.c | 7 ++--- libmultipath/discovery.h | 2 ++ libmultipath/structs.h | 7 +++++ libmultipath/structs_vec.c | 40 ++++++++++++++++------------- multipathd/cli_handlers.c | 4 +++ multipathd/main.c | 48 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--- multipathd/main.h | 1 + multipathd/multipathd.service | 3 +-- 10 files changed, 90 insertions(+), 26 deletions(-) -- 2.17.2 -- dm-devel mailing list dm-devel@xxxxxxxxxx https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/dm-devel