[PATCH V2 net] ibmvnic: Continue with reset if set link down failed

[Lijun Pan]

On Wed, Apr 21, 2021 at 2:25 AM Sukadev Bhattiprolu
<sukadev at linux.ibm.com> wrote:
>
> Lijun Pan [ljp at linux.vnet.ibm.com] wrote:
> >
> >
> > > On Apr 20, 2021, at 4:35 PM, Dany Madden <drt at linux.ibm.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > When ibmvnic gets a FATAL error message from the vnicserver, it marks
> > > the Command Respond Queue (CRQ) inactive and resets the adapter. If this
> > > FATAL reset fails and a transmission timeout reset follows, the CRQ is
> > > still inactive, ibmvnic's attempt to set link down will also fail. If
> > > ibmvnic abandons the reset because of this failed set link down and this
> > > is the last reset in the workqueue, then this adapter will be left in an
> > > inoperable state.
> > >
> > > Instead, make the driver ignore this link down failure and continue to
> > > free and re-register CRQ so that the adapter has an opportunity to
> > > recover.
> >
> > This v2 does not adddress the concerns mentioned in v1.
> > And I think it is better to exit with error from do_reset, and schedule a thorough
> > do_hard_reset if the the adapter is already in unstable state.
>
> We had a FATAL error and when handling it, we failed to send a
> link-down message to the VIOS. So what we need to try next is to
> reset the connection with the VIOS. For this we must talk to the
> firmware using the H_FREE_CRQ and H_REG_CRQ hcalls. do_reset()
> does just that in ibmvnic_reset_crq().
>
> Now, sure we can attempt a "thorough hard reset" which also does
> the same hcalls to reestablish the connection. Is there any
> other magic in do_hard_reset()? But in addition, it also frees lot
> more Linux kernel buffers and reallocates them for instance.

Working around everything in do_reset will make the code very difficult
to manage. Ultimately do_reset can do anything I am afraid, and do_hard_reset
can be removed completely or merged into do_reset.

>
> If we are having a communication problem with the VIOS, what is
> the point of freeing and reallocating Linux kernel buffers? Beside
> being inefficient, it would expose us to even more errors during
> reset under heavy workloads?

No real customer runs the system under that heavy load created by
HTX stress test, which can tear down any working system.

>
> From what I understand so far, do_reset() is complicated because
> it is attempting some optimizations.  If we are going to fall back
> to hard reset for every error we might as well drop the do_reset()
> and just do the "thorough hard reset" every time right?

I think such optimizations are catered for passing HTX tests. Whether
the optimization benefits the adapter, say making the adapter more stable,
I doubt it. I think there should be a trade off between optimization
and stability.