Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 09:17:30 +0200
From: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
To: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>,
       Linux Kernel Developers List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       Ext4 Developers List <linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org>, jack@suse.cz
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/3] block_write_full_page: Use synchronous writes for
	WBC_SYNC_ALL writebacks
Message-ID: <20090407071729.GN5178@kernel.dk>
References: <1238185471-31152-1-git-send-email-tytso@mit.edu> <1238185471-31152-2-git-send-email-tytso@mit.edu> <20090406232141.ebdb426a.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <20090406235052.1ea47513.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <20090407070835.GM5178@kernel.dk>
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On Tue, Apr 07 2009, Jens Axboe wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 06 2009, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > On Mon, 6 Apr 2009 23:21:41 -0700 Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > I mean, let's graph it:
> > > 
> > > WRITE_SYNC -> WRITE_SYNC_PLUG -> BIO_RW_SYNCIO -> bio_sync() -> REQ_RW_SYNC -> rw_is_sync() -> does something mysterious in get_request()
> > >                                                                             -> rq_is_sync() -> does something mysterious in IO schedulers
> > >                               -> BIO_RW_NOIDLE -> bio_noidle() -> REQ_NOIDLE -> rq_noidle() -> does something mysterious in cfq-iosched only
> > >            -> BIO_RW_UNPLUG   -> bio_unplug() -> REQ_UNPLUG -> OK, the cognoscenti know what this is supposed to do, but it is unused!
> > 
> > whoop, I found a use of bio_unplug() in __make_request().
> > 
> > So it appears that the intent of your patch is to cause an unplug after
> > submission of each WB_SYNC_ALL block?
> > 
> > But what about all the other stuff which WRITE_SYNC might or might not
> > do?  What does WRITE_SYNC _actually_ do, and what are the actual
> > effects of this change??
> > 
> > And what effect will this large stream of unplugs have upon merging?
> 
> It looks like a good candidate for WRITE_SYNC_PLUG instead, since it
> does more than one buffer submission before waiting. It likely wont mean
> a whole lot since we'll usually only have a single buffer on that page,
> but for < PAGE_CACHE_SIZE block sizes it could easily make a big
> difference (4 ios instead of 1!).
> 
> So on the write side, basically we have:
> 
> WRITE                   Normal async write.
> WRITE_SYNC_PLUG         Sync write, someone will wait on this so don't
>                         treat it as background activity. This is a hint
>                         to the io schedulers. This one does NOT unplug
>                         the queue, either the caller should do it after
>                         submission, or he should make sure that the
>                         wait_on_* callbacks do it for him.
> WRITE_SYNC              Like WRITE_SYNC_PLUG, but causes immediate
>                         unplug of the queue after submission. Most
>                         uses of this should likely use WRITE_SYNC_PLUG,
>                         at least in the normal IO path.
> WRITE_ODIRECT           Like WRITE_SYNC, but also passes a hint to the
>                         IO scheduler that we should expect more IO.
>                         This is similar to how a read is treated in the
>                         scheduler, it'll enable anticipation/idling.
> 
> Ditto for the SWRITE* variants, which are special hacks for
> ll_rw_block() only.
> 
> I have killed REQ_UNPLUG, it doesn't make sense to pass the further down
> than to __make_request(), so the bio flag is enough.

BTW, with the increased number of sync IO and unplugging, it makes sense
to soon look into some finer granularity of plugging. If we didn't have
so many single page submission paths it would not be as big a problem,
but we do. And since they still persist so many years after we added
functionality to pass bigger IOs, it likely wont be much better in the
future either.

So we can either look into doing per io context plugging, or doing
something similar to:

plugctx = blk_get_plug_context();
        ...
        submit_bio_plug(rw, bio, plugctx);
        ...
        submit_bio_plug(rw, bio, plugctx);
        ...
blk_submit_plug_context(plugctx);

and pass that down through wbc, perhaps. Dunno, just a thought.
Basically a work-around for not having a dedicated writepages() that
does the right thing (ext3 anyone?).

-- 
Jens Axboe

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