Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753298Ab0GZM5f (ORCPT ); Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:57:35 -0400 Received: from gir.skynet.ie ([193.1.99.77]:40999 "EHLO gir.skynet.ie" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751438Ab0GZM5d (ORCPT ); Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:57:33 -0400 Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:57:17 +0100 From: Mel Gorman To: Wu Fengguang Cc: "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" , "linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org" , "linux-mm@kvack.org" , Dave Chinner , Chris Mason , Nick Piggin , Rik van Riel , Johannes Weiner , Christoph Hellwig , KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki , KOSAKI Motohiro , Andrew Morton , Andrea Arcangeli Subject: Re: [PATCH 8/8] vmscan: Kick flusher threads to clean pages when reclaim is encountering dirty pages Message-ID: <20100726125717.GS5300@csn.ul.ie> References: <1279545090-19169-1-git-send-email-mel@csn.ul.ie> <1279545090-19169-9-git-send-email-mel@csn.ul.ie> <20100726072832.GB13076@localhost> <20100726092616.GG5300@csn.ul.ie> <20100726112709.GB6284@localhost> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20100726112709.GB6284@localhost> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.17+20080114 (2008-01-14) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2422 Lines: 57 On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 07:27:09PM +0800, Wu Fengguang wrote: > > > > @@ -933,13 +934,16 @@ keep_dirty: > > > > VM_BUG_ON(PageLRU(page) || PageUnevictable(page)); > > > > } > > > > > > > > + /* > > > > + * If reclaim is encountering dirty pages, it may be because > > > > + * dirty pages are reaching the end of the LRU even though > > > > + * the dirty_ratio may be satisified. In this case, wake > > > > + * flusher threads to pro-actively clean some pages > > > > + */ > > > > + wakeup_flusher_threads(laptop_mode ? 0 : nr_dirty + nr_dirty / 2); > > > > > > Ah it's very possible that nr_dirty==0 here! Then you are hitting the > > > number of dirty pages down to 0 whether or not pageout() is called. > > > > > > > True, this has been fixed to only wakeup flusher threads when this is > > the file LRU, dirty pages have been encountered and the caller has > > sc->may_writepage. > > OK. > > > > Another minor issue is, the passed (nr_dirty + nr_dirty / 2) is > > > normally a small number, much smaller than MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES. > > > The flusher will sync at least MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES pages, this is good > > > for efficiency. > > > And it seems good to let the flusher write much more > > > than nr_dirty pages to safeguard a reasonable large > > > vmscan-head-to-first-dirty-LRU-page margin. So it would be enough to > > > update the comments. > > > > > > > Ok, the reasoning had been to flush a number of pages that was related > > to the scanning rate but if that is inefficient for the flusher, I'll > > use MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES. > > It would be better to pass something like (nr_dirty * N). > MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES may be increased to 128MB in the future, which is > obviously too large as a parameter. When the batch size is increased > to 128MB, the writeback code may be improved somehow to not exceed the > nr_pages limit too much. > What might be a useful value for N? 1.5 appears to work reasonably well to create a window of writeback ahead of the scanner but it's a bit arbitrary. -- Mel Gorman Part-time Phd Student Linux Technology Center University of Limerick IBM Dublin Software Lab -- 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/