From: Trond Myklebust Subject: Re: why are WB_SYNC_NONE COMMITs being done with FLUSH_SYNC set ? Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2010 15:43:19 -0400 Message-ID: <1282246999.7799.66.camel@heimdal.trondhjem.org> References: <20100819101525.076831ad@barsoom.rdu.redhat.com> <20100819143710.GA4752@infradead.org> <1282229905.6199.19.camel@heimdal.trondhjem.org> <20100819151618.5f769dc9@tlielax.poochiereds.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Cc: Christoph Hellwig , fengguang.wu@gmail.com, linux-nfs@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org To: Jeff Layton Return-path: Received: from mail-out1.uio.no ([129.240.10.57]:51368 "EHLO mail-out1.uio.no" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751785Ab0HSTn3 (ORCPT ); Thu, 19 Aug 2010 15:43:29 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20100819151618.5f769dc9-9yPaYZwiELC+kQycOl6kW4xkIHaj4LzF@public.gmane.org> Sender: linux-nfs-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Thu, 2010-08-19 at 15:16 -0400, Jeff Layton wrote: > On Thu, 19 Aug 2010 10:58:25 -0400 > Trond Myklebust wrote: > > > On Thu, 2010-08-19 at 10:37 -0400, Christoph Hellwig wrote: > > > On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 10:15:25AM -0400, Jeff Layton wrote: > > > > I'm looking at backporting some upstream changes to earlier kernels, > > > > and ran across something I don't quite understand... > > > > > > > > In nfs_commit_unstable_pages, we set the flags to FLUSH_SYNC. We then > > > > zero out the flags if wbc->nonblocking or wbc->for_background is set. > > > > > > > > Shouldn't we also clear it out if wbc->sync_mode == WB_SYNC_NONE ? > > > > WB_SYNC_NONE means "don't wait on anything", so shouldn't that include > > > > not waiting on the COMMIT to complete? > > > > > > I've been trying to figure out what the nonblocking flag is supposed > > > to mean for a while now. > > > > > > It basically disappeared in commit 0d99519efef15fd0cf84a849492c7b1deee1e4b7 > > > > > > "writeback: remove unused nonblocking and congestion checks" > > > > > > from Wu. What's left these days is a couple of places in local copies > > > of write_cache_pages (afs, cifs), and a couple of checks in random > > > writepages instances (afs, block_write_full_page, ceph, nfs, reiserfs, xfs) > > > and the use in nfs_write_inode. It's only actually set for memory > > > migration and pageout, that is VM writeback. > > > > > > To me it really doesn't make much sense, but maybe someone has a better > > > idea what it is for. > > > > > > > + if (wbc->nonblocking || wbc->for_background || > > > > + wbc->sync_mode == WB_SYNC_NONE) > > > > > > You could remove the nonblocking and for_background checks as > > > these impliy WB_SYNC_NONE. > > > > To me that sounds fine. I've also been trying to wrap my head around the > > differences between 'nonblocking', 'for_background', 'for_reclaim' and > > 'for_kupdate' and how the filesystem is supposed to treat them. > > > > Aside from the above, I've used 'for_reclaim', 'for_kupdate' and > > 'for_background' in order to adjust the RPC request's queuing priority > > (high in the case of 'for_reclaim' and low for the other two). > > > > Here's a lightly tested patch that turns the check for the two flags > into a check for WB_SYNC_NONE. It seems to do the right thing, but I > don't have a clear testcase for it. Does this look reasonable? Looks fine to me. I'll queue it up for the post-2.6.36 merge window... Cheers Trond