Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753979AbZIWChX (ORCPT ); Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:37:23 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753891AbZIWChW (ORCPT ); Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:37:22 -0400 Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([140.211.169.13]:46038 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753883AbZIWChW (ORCPT ); Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:37:22 -0400 Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:36:22 -0700 From: Andrew Morton To: Wu Fengguang Cc: Chris Mason , Peter Zijlstra , "Li, Shaohua" , "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" , "richard@rsk.demon.co.uk" , "jens.axboe@oracle.com" Subject: Re: regression in page writeback Message-Id: <20090922193622.42c00012.akpm@linux-foundation.org> In-Reply-To: <20090923022622.GB11918@localhost> References: <1253606965.8439.281.camel@twins> <20090922082427.GA24888@localhost> <1253608335.8439.283.camel@twins> <20090922155259.GL10825@think> <20090923002220.GA6382@localhost> <20090922175452.d66400dd.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <20090923011758.GC6382@localhost> <20090922182832.28e7f73a.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <20090923014500.GA11076@localhost> <20090922185941.1118e011.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <20090923022622.GB11918@localhost> X-Mailer: Sylpheed 2.4.8 (GTK+ 2.12.5; x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3415 Lines: 75 On Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:26:22 +0800 Wu Fengguang wrote: > On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 09:59:41AM +0800, Andrew Morton wrote: > > On Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:45:00 +0800 Wu Fengguang wrote: > > > > > On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 09:28:32AM +0800, Andrew Morton wrote: > > > > On Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:17:58 +0800 Wu Fengguang wrote: > > > > > > > > > On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 08:54:52AM +0800, Andrew Morton wrote: > > > > > > On Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:22:20 +0800 Wu Fengguang wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > Jens' per-bdi writeback has another improvement. In 2.6.31, when > > > > > > > superblocks A and B both have 100000 dirty pages, it will first > > > > > > > exhaust A's 100000 dirty pages before going on to sync B's. > > > > > > > > > > > > That would only be true if someone broke 2.6.31. Did they? > > > > > > > > > > > > SYSCALL_DEFINE0(sync) > > > > > > { > > > > > > wakeup_pdflush(0); > > > > > > sync_filesystems(0); > > > > > > sync_filesystems(1); > > > > > > if (unlikely(laptop_mode)) > > > > > > laptop_sync_completion(); > > > > > > return 0; > > > > > > } > > > > > > > > > > > > the sync_filesystems(0) is supposed to non-blockingly start IO against > > > > > > all devices. It used to do that correctly. But people mucked with it > > > > > > so perhaps it no longer does. > > > > > > > > > > I'm referring to writeback_inodes(). Each invocation of which (to sync > > > > > 4MB) will do the same iteration over superblocks A => B => C ... So if > > > > > A has dirty pages, it will always be served first. > > > > > > > > > > So if wbc->bdi == NULL (which is true for kupdate/background sync), it > > > > > will have to first exhaust A before going on to B and C. > > > > > > > > But that works OK. We fill the first device's queue, then it gets > > > > congested and sync_sb_inodes() does nothing and we advance to the next > > > > queue. > > > > > > So in common cases "exhaust" is a bit exaggerated, but A does receive > > > much more opportunity than B. Computation resources for IO submission > > > are unbalanced for A, and there are pointless overheads in rechecking A. > > > > That's unquantified handwaving. One CPU can do a *lot* of IO. > > Yes.. I had the impression that the writeback submission can be pretty slow. > It should be because of the congestion_wait. Now that it is removed, > things are going faster when queue is not full. What? The wait is short. The design intent there is that we repoll all previously-congested queues well before they start to run empty. > > > > If a device has more than a queue's worth of dirty data then we'll > > > > probably leave some of that dirty memory un-queued, so there's some > > > > lack of concurrency in that situation. > > > > > > Good insight. > > > > It was wrong. See the other email. > > No your first insight is correct. Because the (unnecessary) teeny > sleeps is independent of the A=>B=>C traversing order. Only queue > congestion could help skip A. The sleeps are completely necessary! Otherwise we end up busywaiting. After the sleep we repoll all queues. -- 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/