From: Jeff Moyer Subject: [patch/rft] jbd2: tag journal writes as metadata I/O Date: Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:04:54 -0400 Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, jens.axboe@oracle.com, esandeen@redhat.com To: linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-ext4.vger.kernel.org Hi, In running iozone for writes to small files, we noticed a pretty big discrepency between the performance of the deadline and cfq I/O schedulers. Investigation showed that I/O was being issued from 2 different contexts: the iozone process itself, and the jbd2/sdh-8 thread (as expected). Because of the way cfq performs slice idling, the delays introduced between the metadata and data I/Os were significant. For example, cfq would see about 7MB/s versus deadline's 35 for the same workload. I also tested fs_mark with writing and fsyncing 1000 64k files, and a similar 5x performance difference was observed. Eric Sandeen suggested that I flag the journal writes as metadata, and once I did that, the performance difference went away completely (cfq has special logic to prioritize metadata I/O). So, I'm submitting this patch for comments and testing. I have a similar patch for jbd that I will submit if folks agree that this is a good idea. Cheers, Jeff Signed-off-by: Jeff Moyer diff --git a/fs/jbd2/commit.c b/fs/jbd2/commit.c index 671da7f..1998265 100644 --- a/fs/jbd2/commit.c +++ b/fs/jbd2/commit.c @@ -139,7 +139,7 @@ static int journal_submit_commit_record(journal_t *journal, set_buffer_ordered(bh); barrier_done = 1; } - ret = submit_bh(WRITE_SYNC_PLUG, bh); + ret = submit_bh(WRITE_SYNC_PLUG | (1<t_synchronous_commit) - write_op = WRITE_SYNC_PLUG; + write_op = WRITE_SYNC_PLUG | (1<t_max_wait; stats.run.rs_locked = jiffies;