Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1759803Ab2JLQ35 (ORCPT ); Fri, 12 Oct 2012 12:29:57 -0400 Received: from mail.avalus.com ([89.16.176.221]:33751 "EHLO mail.avalus.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1758140Ab2JLQ3z (ORCPT ); Fri, 12 Oct 2012 12:29:55 -0400 Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2012 17:29:50 +0100 From: Alex Bligh Reply-To: Alex Bligh To: Michal Hocko cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Alex Bligh Subject: Re: Local DoS through write heavy I/O on CFQ & Deadline Message-ID: <3D1C85A52BB960B79E37AC30@nimrod.local> In-Reply-To: <20121012145838.GD22083@dhcp22.suse.cz> References: <0B138F62-16BF-4295-9AD9-64C0BB39FCE2@alex.org.uk> <20121012133044.GA10115@dhcp22.suse.cz> <20121012145838.GD22083@dhcp22.suse.cz> X-Mailer: Mulberry/4.0.8 (Mac OS X) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1579 Lines: 42 Michael, --On 12 October 2012 16:58:39 +0200 Michal Hocko wrote: > Once dirty_ratio (resp. dirty_bytes) limit is hit then the process which > writes gets throttled. If this is not the case then there is a bug in > the throttling code. I believe that is the problem. >> Isn't the only thing that is going to change that it ends up >> triggering the writeback earlier? > > Set the limit lowe? I think you mean 'lower'. If I do that, what I think will happen is that it will start the write-back earlier, but the writeback once started will not keep up with the generation of data, possibly because the throttling isn't going to work. Note that for instance using ionice to set priority or class to 'idle' has no effect. So, to test my hypothesis ... >> Happy to test etc - what would you suggest, dirty_ratio=5, >> dirty_background_ratio=2 ? > > These are measured in percentage. On the other hand if you use > dirty_bytes resp. dirty_background_bytes then you get absolute numbers > independent on the amount of memory. ... what would you suggest I set any of these to in order to test (assuming the same box) so that it's 'low enough' that if it still hangs, it's a bug, rather than it's simply 'not low enough'. It's an 8G box and clearly I'm happy to set either the _ratio or _bytes entries. -- Alex Bligh -- 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/