Btrfs Getting RAID 5/6 Fixes In Linux 4.12 Kernel

Not only is the BFQ I/O scheduler coming for mainline Linux 4.12 but there are also some more fixes to Btrfs for improving the file-system's native handling of RAID5 and RAID6 modes.

Last year the Btrfs RAID 5/6 code was found to be in bad shape and potentially unsafe. Since then there were some partial fixes for Btrfs RAID 5/6.

With Linux 4.12, more fixes are en route. Queueing up in Chris Mason's for-linus-4.12 branch is the new material that will be heading to Linus Torvalds when the 4.12 merge window opens up either today (if 4.11 ends up getting out today) or next weekend.

Among the RAID 5/6 fixes are fixing a recovery race condition in the scrub code, adding a full stripe lock for RAID 5/6, enable repair during read for the RAID 5/6 profile, and a few other fixes pertaining to the RAID5 and RAID6 operation modes for Btrfs.

The other file-system changes queued so far for Btrfs targeting Linux 4.12 can be found via this Git branch.