Hi, Currently, there is a restriction on resizing device-mapper device: it cannot be resized if 'noflush' option is given for suspend.
Since both multipath-tools (dm-multipath) and LVM2 mirror use 'noflush' suspend, the restriction limits the capability of those tools. The following patches remove the restriction. [PATCH] (1/3) Add bdlookup() [PATCH] (2/3) Use bdlookup() on noflush suspend [PATCH] (3/3) Allow resizing table load on noflush suspend The patches were tested on i686 and ia64 with LVM2, for both 'noflush' case and normal case. Background: - For some device-mapper targets (multipath and mirror), the mapping table sometimes has to be replaced to cope with device failure. OTOH, device-mapper flushes all pending I/Os upon table replacement and may result in I/O errors, if there are device failures. 'noflush' suspend is used to let dm queue the pending I/Os instead of flushing them. Since it's not possible for user space program to tell whether the suspend could cause I/O error, they always use 'noflush' to suspend mirror/multipath targets. - Currently resizing is disabled for 'noflush' suspend. Resizing occurs in the course of table replacement. To resize the device under use, device-mapper needs to get its bdev inode. However, using bdget() in this case could cause deadlock by waiting for I_LOCK where an I/O process holding I_LOCK is waiting for completion of table replacement. Thanks, -- Jun'ichi Nomura, NEC Corporation of America - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/