Early alpha processors cannot write a single byte or word; they read 8
bytes, modify the value in registers and write back 8 bytes.
The type blk_status_t is defined as one byte, it is often written
asynchronously by I/O completion routines, this asynchronous modification
can corrupt content of nearby bytes if these nearby bytes can be written
simultaneously by another CPU.
- one example of such corruption is the structure dm_io where
"blk_status_t status" is written by an asynchronous completion routine
and "atomic_t io_count" is modified synchronously
- another example is the structure dm_buffer where "unsigned hold_count"
is modified synchronously from process context and "blk_status_t
write_error" is modified asynchronously from bio completion routine
This patch fixes the bug by changing the type blk_status_t to 32 bits if
we are on Alpha and if we are compiling for a processor that doesn't have
the byte-word-extension.