Hi, first time sending a patch, please be kind. Detaching a cache set from a backing device set to writeback with dirty data in it may cause the backing device to get a final state of BDEV_STATE_CLEAN instead of BDEV_STATE_NONE. bcache-supert-show will show this as: dev.data.cache_state 1 [clean] cset.uuid 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 When trying to register this device, the kernel will log the message "bcache: register_bdev() registered backing device md126" but no /dev/bcache* and /sys/block/bcache* device will show up. Registering the device a second time will hang the echo. Unloading the bcache module is not possible as the refcount is increased. There's no way to stop this device within bcache as there is no sysfs entry. The issue is persistent. Johannes Thumshirn fron SUSE assuemes it may only happen when using Software RAIDs for the bcache devices. Steps to reproduce: Setup /dev/md/cache as bcache caching device Setup /dev/md/storage as bcache caching device in writeback mode Startup bcache and make sure the cache set is attached Format /dev/bcache0 with XFS and mount it at /x ./fio --name=test --filename=/x/test.dat --bs=1M --rw=randwrite --size=128G --fallocate=none There should be >100GB of dirty data for /dev/bcache0 (check from /sys/block/bcache0/bcache/dirty_data) Then immediately do echo 1 > /sys/block/bcache0/bcache/detach Wait until all dirty data was written back. With a high probability /sys/block/bcache0/bcache/state will be clean instead of "no cache" Reboot the system, try to register the device # echo /dev/md/storage > /sys/fs/bcache/register # dmesg |tail [ 1248.965231] bcache: register_bdev() registered backing device md127 # ls -al /dev/bcache? ls: cannot access /dev/bcache?: No such file or directory # ls -al /sys/block/bcache? ls: cannot access /sys/block/bcache?: No such file or directory # grep ^bcache /proc/modules bcache 238115 1 - Live 0xffffffffa0582000 # rmmod bcache rmmod: ERROR: Module bcache is in use I looked into the code. There are only two places in the kernel where the cache state is set to "clean". It looks that due to the asynchrony in the bcache module SET_BDEV_STATE() in writeback.c/refill_dirty() may be called after the function super.c/cached_dev_detach_finished() and sets the the state from BDEV_STATE_NONE (set by cached_dev_detach_finished()) to BDEV_STATE_CLEAN. I do not understand completely the flow in bcache but adding an additional check in refill_dirty() to not change the state from NONE to CLEAN is probably the most minimal change to prevent having a detached backing device in the state CLEAN. I tested the patch multiple times and with different operations, the issue is gone and there were no side-effects. The patch is against 3.12. Signed-off-by: Christoph Nelles <evilazrael@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Reviewed-by: Johannes Thumshirn <jthumshirn@xxxxxxx> diff -rup linux/drivers/md/bcache/writeback.c linux-fix/drivers/md/bcache/writeback.c --- linux/drivers/md/bcache/writeback.c 2015-10-05 12:08:10.000000000 +0200 +++ linux-fix/drivers/md/bcache/writeback.c 2015-12-09 15:55:46.524238412 +0100 @@ -169,8 +169,11 @@ static void refill_dirty(struct closure down_write(&dc->writeback_lock); if (!atomic_read(&dc->has_dirty)) { - SET_BDEV_STATE(&dc->sb, BDEV_STATE_CLEAN); - bch_write_bdev_super(dc, NULL); + + if (BDEV_STATE(&dc->sb) != BDEV_STATE_NONE) { + SET_BDEV_STATE(&dc->sb, BDEV_STATE_CLEAN); + bch_write_bdev_super(dc, NULL); + } up_write(&dc->writeback_lock); closure_return(cl); -- Christoph Nelles E-Mail : evilazrael@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Jabber : eazrael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx ICQ : 78819723 PGP-Key : ID 0x3123487D on subkeys.pgp.net or https://evilazrael.net/pgp.txt -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-bcache" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html