Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1760600AbZDQL1j (ORCPT ); Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:27:39 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1757550AbZDQL1a (ORCPT ); Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:27:30 -0400 Received: from serv2.oss.ntt.co.jp ([222.151.198.100]:53485 "EHLO serv2.oss.ntt.co.jp" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754736AbZDQL13 (ORCPT ); Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:27:29 -0400 Message-ID: <49E8679D.8010405@oss.ntt.co.jp> Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:27:25 +0900 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fernando_Luis_V=E1zquez_Cao?= User-Agent: Mozilla-Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 (X11/20090103) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Ryo Tsuruta CC: kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com, yoshikawa.takuya@oss.ntt.co.jp, righi.andrea@gmail.com, menage@google.com, balbir@linux.vnet.ibm.com, guijianfeng@cn.fujitsu.com, agk@sourceware.org, akpm@linux-foundation.org, axboe@kernel.dk, baramsori72@gmail.com, chlunde@ping.uio.no, dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com, dpshah@google.com, eric.rannaud@gmail.com, taka@valinux.co.jp, lizf@cn.fujitsu.com, matt@bluehost.com, dradford@bluehost.com, ngupta@google.com, randy.dunlap@oracle.com, roberto@unbit.it, s-uchida@ap.jp.nec.com, subrata@linux.vnet.ibm.com, containers@lists.linux-foundation.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Block I/O tracking (was Re: [PATCH 3/9] bio-cgroup controller) References: <1239740480-28125-4-git-send-email-righi.andrea@gmail.com> <49E7E037.9080004@oss.ntt.co.jp> <20090417112433.085ed604.kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> <20090417.162201.183038478.ryov@valinux.co.jp> In-Reply-To: <20090417.162201.183038478.ryov@valinux.co.jp> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 5161 Lines: 111 Ryo Tsuruta wrote: > Hi, > > From: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki > Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:24:33 +0900 > >> On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:49:43 +0900 >> Takuya Yoshikawa wrote: >> >>> Hi, >>> >>> I have a few question. >>> - I have not yet fully understood how your controller are using >>> bio_cgroup. If my view is wrong please tell me. >>> >>> o In my view, bio_cgroup's implementation strongly depends on >>> page_cgoup's. Could you explain for what purpose does this >>> functionality itself should be implemented as cgroup subsystem? >>> Using page_cgoup and implementing tracking APIs is not enough? >> I'll definitely do "Nack" to add full bio-cgroup members to page_cgroup. >> Now, page_cgroup is 40bytes(in 64bit arch.) And all of them are allocated at >> boot time as memmap. (and add member to struct page is much harder ;) >> >> IIUC, feature for "tracking bio" is just necesary for pages for I/O. >> So, I think it's much better to add misc. information to struct bio not to the page. >> But, if people want to add "small hint" to struct page or struct page_cgroup >> for tracking buffered I/O, I'll give you help as much as I can. >> Maybe using "unused bits" in page_cgroup->flags is a choice with no overhead. > > In the case where the bio-cgroup data is allocated dynamically, > - Sometimes quite a large amount of memory get marked dirty. > In this case it requires more kernel memory than that of the > current implementation. > - The operation is expansive due to memory allocations and exclusive > controls by such as spinlocks. > > In the case where the bio-cgroup data is allocated by delayed allocation, > - It makes the operation complicated and expensive, because > sometimes a bio has to be created in the context of other > processes, such as aio and swap-out operation. > > I'd prefer a simple and lightweight implementation. bio-cgroup only > needs 4bytes unlike memory controller. The reason why bio-cgroup chose > this approach is to minimize the overhead. Elaborating on Yoshikawa-san's comment, I would like to propose a generic I/O tracking mechanism that is not tied to all the cgroup paraphernalia. This approach has several advantages: - By using this functionality, existing I/O schedulers (well, some relatively minor changes would be needed) would be able to schedule buffered I/O properly. - The amount of memory consumed to do the tracking could be optimized according to the kernel configuration (do we really need struct page_cgroup when the cgroup memory controller or all of the cgroup infrastructure has been configured out?). The I/O tracking functionality would look something like the following: - Create an API to acquire the I/O context of a certain page, which is cgroup independent. For discussion purposes, I will assume that the I/O context of a page is the io_context of the task that dirtied the page (this can be changed if deemed necessary, though). - When cgroups are not being used, pages would be tracked using a pfn-indexed array of struct io_context (? la memcg's array of struct page_cgroup). - When cgroups are activated but the memory controller is not, we would have a pfn-indexed array of struct blkio_cgroup, which would have both a pointer to the corresponding io_context of the page and a reference to the cgroup it belongs to (most likely using css_id). The API offered by the I/O tracking mechanism would be extended so that the kernel can easily obtain not only the per-task io_context but also the cgroup a certain page belongs to. Please notice that by doing this we have all the information we need to schedule buffered I/O both at the cgroup-level and the task-level. From the memory usage point of view, memory controller-specific bits would be gone and to top it all we save one indirection level (since struct page_cgroup would be out of the picture). - When the memory controller is active we would have the pfn-indexed array of struct page_cgroup we have know plus a reference to the corresponding cgroup and io_context (yes, I still want to do proper scheduling of buffered I/O within a cgroup). - Finally, since bio entering the block layer can generate additional bios it is necessary to pass the I/O context information of original bio down to the new bios. For that stacking devices such as dm and those of that ilk will have to be modified. To improve performance I/O context information would be cached in bios (to achieve this we have to ensure that all bios that enter the block layer have the right I/O context information attached to it). Yoshikawa-san and myself have been working on a patch-set that implements just this and we have reached that point where the kernel does not panic right after booting:), so we will be sending patches soon (hopefully this weekend). Any thoughts? Regards, Fernando -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/