On Wed, 27 May 2009, James Bottomley wrote: > > I can't tell whether you understood my point. After a scsi_device is > > unregistered but before it is released -- i.e., when its state is > > SDEV_DEL -- it _is_ essentially unusable. So why wait until it is > > released to decrement the target's device counter? Why not do the > > decrement in __scsi_remove_device()? > > because the use model of the device still requires a valid target. Even > though it gets gated in several places in SDEV_DEL, we still have use of > the target parent. This is fixable, but only by a long audit of all the > sdev uses plus the enforcement of no use of target in DEL state rule, > which adds complexity. You're failing to distinguish properly between "delete" and "release". A target (or device in general) is deleted when it is removed from visibility -- i.e., when device_del() is called. It is released when the final put_device() call occurs and the data structure is deallocated. So, all I'm saying is there's nothing wrong with deleting a target when all its children are deleted, provided the target isn't released until all the children are released. Below you say the same thing. > > > Perhaps I haven't made the problem clear enough. You only want early > > > del if the host is going away, otherwise the target might be reused and > > > it can't be if you've called del on it. So there needs to be an > > > integration into the host lifecycle in some form. > > > > Yes, granted. That integration doesn't have to be complicated. > > Basically, you just decrement the counters in all the targets when > > setting a host's state to SHOST_DEL or SHOST_DEL_RECOVERY. At that > > And SHOST_CANCEL and SHOST_CANCEL_RECOVERY. If you prefer. I thought SHOST_DEL would be more appropriate because it occurs after scsi_forget_host() is called. All those transitions occur in scsi_remove_host(), anyway. > > point there's no reason to keep an unpopulated target around, right? > > If the child list were empty, sure. However, it's likely not going to > be at this point. Regardless, it will work either way. > > Up until that point, the counter's value should be one more than the > > number of underlying sdevs. So if the counter decrements to 0 then > > there were no underlying sdevs and the target is deleted immediately; > > otherwise it is deleted when the last remaining sdev is deleted. > > No, that's the problem. It can be removed from visibility if it has no > visible sdevs, but it can't be deleted until the last sdev is released. Allow me to rephrase this: A target can be removed from visibility if it has no visible sdevs, but it can't be _released_ until the last sdev is released. That's fine. You remove a target from visibility when target->reap_ref becomes 0. The target isn't released until the target's embedded struct device's refcount becomes 0. To make this work, simply have scsi_alloc_sdev() call get_device(&starget->dev); and have scsi_device_dev_release_usercontext() call put_device(&starget->dev); Doesn't that do exactly what you're asking for? Alan Stern -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
