Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 12/16] libnvdimm, nfit: enable support for volatile
 ranges
To: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
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From: Linda Knippers <linda.knippers@hpe.com>
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Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2017 17:16:39 -0400
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On 06/29/2017 04:42 PM, Dan Williams wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 12:20 PM, Linda Knippers <linda.knippers@hpe.com> wrote:
>> On 06/29/2017 01:54 PM, Dan Williams wrote:
>>> Allow volatile nfit ranges to participate in all the same infrastructure
>>> provided for persistent memory regions.
>>
>> This seems to be a bit more than "other rework".
> 
> It's part of the rationale for having a "write_cache" control
> attribute. There's only so much I can squeeze into the subject line,
> but it is mentioned in the cover letter.
> 
>>> A resulting resulting namespace
>>> device will still be called "pmem", but the parent region type will be
>>> "nd_volatile".
>>
>> What does this look like to a user or admin?  How does someone know that
>> /dev/pmemX is persistent memory and /dev/pmemY isn't?  Someone shouldn't
>> have to weed through /sys or ndctl some other interface to figure that out
>> in the future if they don't have to do that today.  We have different
>> names for BTT namespaces.  Is there a different name for volatile ranges?
> 
> No, the block device name is still /dev/pmem. It's already the case
> that you need to check behind just the name of the device to figure
> out if something is actually volatile or not (see memmap=ss!nn
> configurations),

I don't have any experience with using memmap but if it's primarily used
by developers without NVDIMMs, they'd know it's not persistent.  Or is it
primarily used by administrators using non-NFIT NVDIMMs, in which case it
is persistent?

In any case, how exactly does one determine whether the device is volatile
or not?  I'm dumb so tell me the command line or API.

> so I would not be in favor of changing the device
> name if we think the memory might not be persistent. Moreover, I think
> it was a mistake that we change the device name for btt or not, and
> I'm glad Matthew talked me out of making the same mistake with
> memory-mode vs raw-mode pmem namespaces. So, the block device name
> just reflects the driver of the block device, not the properties of
> the device, just like all other block device instances.

I agree that creating a new device name for BTT was perhaps a mistake,
although it would be good to know how to query a device property for
sector atomicity.  The difference between BTT vs. non-BTT seems less
critical to me than knowing in an obvious way whether the device is
actually persistent.

-- ljk