Re: [PATCH v2 3/3] scsi-disk: Add support for the GET LBA STATUS 16 command

[Eric Blake]

On 6/29/20 5:39 AM, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:

> > > SCSI defines 3 values and QEMU can represent all of them:
> > >
> > > 0 - mapped or unknown
> > > 1 - deallocated
> > > 2 - anchored
> > >
> > > See the BDRV_BLOCK_* constants in include/block/block.h. The
> > > is_deallocated boolean is not enough to represent this state, but the
> > > bdrv_block_status() return value can be used instead.
> >
> > I don't know which one in BDRV_BLOCK_* can be used to represent 'anchored'.
> > It seems that I need to use BDRV_BLOCK_* combination to recognized 'anchored',
> >
> > I'd like to use these combinations to analyze the bdrv_block_status() return 
> > value:
> > 'deallocated': BDRV_BLOCK_ALLOCATED | BDRV_BLOCK_OFFSET_VALID | BDRV_BLOCK_ZERO
> > 'anchored':    BDRV_BLOCK_ALLOCATED | BDRV_BLOCK_OFFSET_VALID | ! 
> > BDRV_BLOCK_ZERO | ! BDRV_BLOCK_DATA
> > Am I right?
>
> My understanding is that the SCSI status are mapped to QEMU block status
> as follows:
>
> allocated: BDRV_BLOCK_DATA | !BDRV_BLOCK_ZERO | BDRV_BLOCK_OFFSET_VALID

I haven't read the scsi code, but as written, I would assume that any 
portion of the block status with this result has the following properties:
- reading sees guest-visible data; we cannot guarantee whether it is all 
zero, and the data reserves actual space

> anchored: BDRV_BLOCK_DATA | BDRV_BLOCK_ZERO | BDRV_BLOCK_OFFSET_VALID

- reading sees all zeros, but the disk has reserved actual space such 
that future writes will not run out of space

> deallocated: !BDRV_BLOCK_DATA

- reading does not see data; future writes will have to reserve space. 
I would expect this option might also have '| BDRV_BLOCK_ZERO' depending 
on whether this particular scsi device guarantees that reads of an 
unallocated portion see all zeros instead of unspecified garbage.

> I have CCed Eric Blake, who is familiar with block status.

Adding Vladimir in CC as well, as he has pending patches that try to 
clear up the use of BDRV_BLOCK_* constants with regards to two different 
queries:
- allocation implies that data comes from this layer of a backing chain, 
rather than deferring to a backing image
- allocation implies that storage is reserved (that is, not sparse)

It sounds like we are trying to represent the second question for scsi 
(namely, the same question that gets answered by lseek(SEEK_HOLE) for 
POSIX files), and not the first (namely, the question answered for qcow2 
images).


--
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3226
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org