Andrew, I'd suggest it for 2.6.25.
It's a safer version of the reverted patch in .24-rc8. It was tested
on ext2/ext3/jfs/xfs/reiserfs and won't 100% iowait even without the
other bug fixing patches.
Fengguang
---
writeback: speed up writeback of big dirty files
After making dirty a 100M file, the normal behavior is to
start the writeback for all data after 30s delays. But
sometimes the following happens instead:
- after 30s: ~4M
- after 5s: ~4M
- after 5s: all remaining 92M
Some analyze shows that the internal io dispatch queues goes like this:
s_io s_more_io
-------------------------
1) 100M,1K 0
2) 1K 96M
3) 0 96M
1) initial state with a 100M file and a 1K file
2) 4M written, nr_to_write <= 0, so write more
3) 1K written, nr_to_write > 0, no more writes(BUG)
nr_to_write > 0 in (3) fools the upper layer to think that data have all been
written out. The big dirty file is actually still sitting in s_more_io. We
cannot simply splice s_more_io back to s_io as soon as s_io becomes empty, and
let the loop in generic_sync_sb_inodes() continue: this may starve newly
expired inodes in s_dirty. It is also not an option to draw inodes from both
s_more_io and s_dirty, an let the loop go on: this might lead to live locks,
and might also starve other superblocks in sync time(well kupdate may still
starve some superblocks, that's another bug).
We have to return when a full scan of s_io completes. So nr_to_write > 0 does
not necessarily mean that "all data are written". This patch introduces a flag
writeback_control.more_io to indicate that more io should be done. With it the
big dirty file no longer has to wait for the next kupdate invocation 5s later.
In sync_sb_inodes() we only set more_io on super_blocks we actually visited.
This aviods the interaction between two pdflush deamons.
Also in __sync_single_inode() we don't blindly keep requeuing the io if the
filesystem cannot progress. Failing to do so may lead to 100% iowait.
Tested-by: Mike Snitzer <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Fengguang Wu <[email protected]>
---
fs/fs-writeback.c | 18 ++++++++++++++++--
include/linux/writeback.h | 1 +
mm/page-writeback.c | 9 ++++++---
3 files changed, 23 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
--- linux-mm.orig/fs/fs-writeback.c
+++ linux-mm/fs/fs-writeback.c
@@ -284,7 +284,17 @@ __sync_single_inode(struct inode *inode,
* soon as the queue becomes uncongested.
*/
inode->i_state |= I_DIRTY_PAGES;
- requeue_io(inode);
+ if (wbc->nr_to_write <= 0) {
+ /*
+ * slice used up: queue for next turn
+ */
+ requeue_io(inode);
+ } else {
+ /*
+ * somehow blocked: retry later
+ */
+ redirty_tail(inode);
+ }
} else {
/*
* Otherwise fully redirty the inode so that
@@ -468,8 +478,12 @@ void generic_sync_sb_inodes(struct super
iput(inode);
cond_resched();
spin_lock(&inode_lock);
- if (wbc->nr_to_write <= 0)
+ if (wbc->nr_to_write <= 0) {
+ wbc->more_io = 1;
break;
+ }
+ if (!list_empty(&sb->s_more_io))
+ wbc->more_io = 1;
}
spin_unlock(&inode_lock);
return; /* Leave any unwritten inodes on s_io */
--- linux-mm.orig/include/linux/writeback.h
+++ linux-mm/include/linux/writeback.h
@@ -62,6 +62,7 @@ struct writeback_control {
unsigned for_reclaim:1; /* Invoked from the page allocator */
unsigned for_writepages:1; /* This is a writepages() call */
unsigned range_cyclic:1; /* range_start is cyclic */
+ unsigned more_io:1; /* more io to be dispatched */
};
/*
--- linux-mm.orig/mm/page-writeback.c
+++ linux-mm/mm/page-writeback.c
@@ -567,6 +567,7 @@ static void background_writeout(unsigned
global_page_state(NR_UNSTABLE_NFS) < background_thresh
&& min_pages <= 0)
break;
+ wbc.more_io = 0;
wbc.encountered_congestion = 0;
wbc.nr_to_write = MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES;
wbc.pages_skipped = 0;
@@ -574,8 +575,9 @@ static void background_writeout(unsigned
min_pages -= MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES - wbc.nr_to_write;
if (wbc.nr_to_write > 0 || wbc.pages_skipped > 0) {
/* Wrote less than expected */
- congestion_wait(WRITE, HZ/10);
- if (!wbc.encountered_congestion)
+ if (wbc.encountered_congestion || wbc.more_io)
+ congestion_wait(WRITE, HZ/10);
+ else
break;
}
}
@@ -640,11 +642,12 @@ static void wb_kupdate(unsigned long arg
global_page_state(NR_UNSTABLE_NFS) +
(inodes_stat.nr_inodes - inodes_stat.nr_unused);
while (nr_to_write > 0) {
+ wbc.more_io = 0;
wbc.encountered_congestion = 0;
wbc.nr_to_write = MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES;
writeback_inodes(&wbc);
if (wbc.nr_to_write > 0) {
- if (wbc.encountered_congestion)
+ if (wbc.encountered_congestion || wbc.more_io)
congestion_wait(WRITE, HZ/10);
else
break; /* All the old data is written */