linux-ext4 - Re: Enable asynchronous commits by default patch revoked?

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Date:	Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:28:04 -0400
From:	Theodore Tso <tytso@....edu>
To:	Ric Wheeler <rwheeler@...hat.com>
Cc:	Andreas Dilger <adilger@....com>,
	Christian Fischer <Christian.Fischer@...terngraphics.com>,
	linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Enable asynchronous commits by default patch revoked?

On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 06:12:11PM -0400, Ric Wheeler wrote:
> I see that this might be slightly faster, but would be very interested  
> in seeing that the gain is big enough to warrant the complexity :-)

This simple enough?  :-)

commit 5127a5da28fc12a219474c96e59fd178629436fe
Author: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@....edu>
Date:   Mon Aug 24 19:18:31 2009 -0400

    ext4: Fix async commit mode by writing the commit record using a barrier

    Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>

diff --git a/fs/jbd2/commit.c b/fs/jbd2/commit.c
index 7b4088b..a7fe81d 100644
--- a/fs/jbd2/commit.c
+++ b/fs/jbd2/commit.c
@@ -132,9 +132,7 @@ static int journal_submit_commit_record(journal_t *journal,
 	set_buffer_uptodate(bh);
 	bh->b_end_io = journal_end_buffer_io_sync;

-	if (journal->j_flags & JBD2_BARRIER &&
-		!JBD2_HAS_INCOMPAT_FEATURE(journal,
-					 JBD2_FEATURE_INCOMPAT_ASYNC_COMMIT)) {
+	if (journal->j_flags & JBD2_BARRIER) {
 		set_buffer_ordered(bh);
 		barrier_done = 1;
 	}

Ok, to be fair, most of the complexity was already in the code
already; but it the main complexity was simply separating
journal_write_commit_record() into journal_submit_commit_record() and
journal_wait_on_commit_record().    

We can clean up the patch by recombining these two functions, since
there was never any point in separate submitting the commit record
from where we waited for it.  I think who ever implemented thought we
could add a bit more paralisms, but in reality all of the code between
line 709 of commit.c and 834 of commit.c (i.e., commit phases 3-5) is
waiting for the various journal data blocks to be written.  So we
might as well wait for the commit block, which will save a bit of
scheduling overhead, using the same rationale listed in the commit
found in line 740 of commit.c:

      /*
         Wait for the buffers in reverse order.  That way we are
	 less likely to be woken up until all IOs have completed, and
	 so we incur less scheduling load.
       */

But in terms of a simple patch to test things, the above patch is all
we need.  At this point, we can try benchmarking with and without
async commit, and see if it makes a significant difference or not.

            	      	      	    	    - Ted

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