DM-Integrity Under RAID Without Journalling

Russell Harmon <[email protected]> Sun, 28 May 2023 19:02:35 -0700
Newsgroups dev.linux.lists.cryptsetup
Message-ID <CA+zrezRB-PewcH_-h8PZmGOc1RVBwdS-uReago8XXLkVTw+EDg@mail.gmail.com>
Hey all,

I'm looking to use dm-integrity with its journal turned off as the
backing devices for a RAID-6 array. This is with two goals:
Closing the RAID456 write hole (md.4 section "RAID WRITE HOLE").

1. Detecting (other kinds of) silent data corruption coming from the drive.
2. The resulting configuration will have no journaling (both for
dm-integrity and for mdraid).

If I understand things correctly, it seems like this covers all the
cases I listed. If there's data corruption (either via the write hole,
or coming from the drive), periodic scrubs will detect and repair the
corruption (since mdraid will consider the corrupt data invalid).

Does this seem like a correct/valid combination to achieve my goals?

Aside, I see the value of dm-integrity's journal (in non-RAID
configurations), but what's the point of the bitmap? It seems like
that just reintroduces the potential for undiscovered data corruption
on the drive (e.g. if there's data corruption in an unsynchronized
region, at the next boot the corrupted data will falsely be considered
valid).