To determine whether the kernel is capable of handling empty barrier
BIOs, we check for the presence of the bio_empty_barrier() macro,
which was introduced in 2.6.24. If this macro is defined, then we can
flush disk vdevs; if it isn't, then flushing is disabled.
Unfortunately, the bio_empty_barrier() macro was removed in 2.6.37,
even though the kernel is still capable of handling empty barrier BIOs.
As a result, flushing is effectively disabled on kernels >= 2.6.37,
meaning that starting from this kernel version, zfs doesn't use
barriers to guarantee on-disk data consistency. This is quite bad and
can lead to potential data corruption on power failures.
This patch fixes the issue by removing the configure check for
bio_empty_barrier(), as we don't support kernels <= 2.6.24 anymore.
Thanks to Richard Kojedzinszky for catching this nasty bug.
Signed-off-by: Brian Behlendorf <behlendorf1@llnl.gov>
Closes#1318
d9b0ebbe82