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Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2011 21:59:31 +0800
From: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@...el.com>
To: Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
Mel Gorman <mel@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com>,
Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>, Mel Gorman <mel@....ul.ie>,
Itaru Kitayama <kitayama@...bb4u.ne.jp>,
Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@...il.com>,
Linux Memory Management List <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
"linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>,
LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 5/6] writeback: sync expired inodes first in background
writeback
On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 09:51:30PM +0800, Wu Fengguang wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 08:17:51PM +0800, Jan Kara wrote:
> > On Sun 24-04-11 11:15:31, Wu Fengguang wrote:
> > > > One of the many requirements for writeback is that if userspace is
> > > > continually dirtying pages in a particular file, that shouldn't cause
> > > > the kupdate function to concentrate on that file's newly-dirtied pages,
> > > > neglecting pages from other files which were less-recently dirtied.
> > > > (and dirty nodes, etc).
> > >
> > > Sadly I do find the old pages that the flusher never get a chance to
> > > catch and write them out.
> > What kind of load do you use?
>
> Sorry I was just thinking about it and then got a _theoretic_ case.
>
> > > In the below case, if the task dirties pages fast enough at the end of
> > > file, writeback_index will never get a chance to wrap back. There may
> > > be various variations of this case.
> > >
> > > file head
> > > [ *** ==>***************]==>
> > > old pages writeback_index fresh dirties
> > >
> > > Ironically the current kernel relies on pageout() to catch these
> > > old pages, which is not only inefficient, but also not reliable.
> > > If a full LRU walk takes an hour, the old pages may stay dirtied
> > > for an hour.
> > Well, the kupdate behavior has always been just a best-effort thing. We
> > always tried to handle well common cases but didn't try to solve all of
> > them. Unless we want to track dirty-age of every page (which we don't
> > want because it's too expensive), there is really no way to make syncing
> > of old pages 100% working for all the cases unless we do data-integrity
> > type of writeback for the whole inode - but that could create new problems
> > with stalling other files for too long I suspect.
>
> Yeah, it's a hard problem in general. The flusher works naturally in
> the coarse way..
>
> > > We may have to do (conditional) tagged ->writepages to safeguard users
> > > from losing data he'd expect to be written hours ago.
> > Well, if the file is continuously written (and in your case it must be
> > even continuosly grown) I'd be content if we handle well the common case of
> > linear append (that happens for log files etc.). If we can do well for more
> > cases, even better but I'd be cautious not to disrupt some other more
> > common cases.
>
> I scratched a patch (totally untested) which will guarantee any kind
> of starvation inside an inode. Will this be too overweight?
>
> Thanks,
> Fengguang
> ---
> Subject: writeback: livelock prevention inside actively dirtied files
> Date: Tue Apr 26 21:35:47 CST 2011
>
> - refresh dirtied_when on every full writeback_index cycle
> (pages may be skipped on SYNC_NONE, but as long as they are retried in
> next cycle..)
>
> - do tagged sync when writeback_index not cycled for too long time
> (the arbitrarily 60s may lead to more page tagging overheads in
> "large dirty threshold but slow storage" system..)
>
> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@...el.com>
> ---
> fs/fs-writeback.c | 1 +
> include/linux/fs.h | 1 +
> include/linux/pagemap.h | 16 ++++++++++++++++
> mm/page-writeback.c | 24 ++++++++++++++++++------
> 4 files changed, 36 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
>
> --- linux-next.orig/fs/fs-writeback.c 2011-04-26 21:26:28.000000000 +0800
> +++ linux-next/fs/fs-writeback.c 2011-04-26 21:26:39.000000000 +0800
> @@ -1110,6 +1110,7 @@ void __mark_inode_dirty(struct inode *in
> spin_unlock(&inode->i_lock);
> spin_lock(&bdi->wb.list_lock);
> inode->dirtied_when = jiffies;
> + inode->i_mapping->writeback_cycle_time = jiffies;
> list_move(&inode->i_wb_list, &bdi->wb.b_dirty);
> spin_unlock(&bdi->wb.list_lock);
>
> --- linux-next.orig/include/linux/fs.h 2011-04-26 21:26:28.000000000 +0800
> +++ linux-next/include/linux/fs.h 2011-04-26 21:26:39.000000000 +0800
> @@ -639,6 +639,7 @@ struct address_space {
> unsigned int truncate_count; /* Cover race condition with truncate */
> unsigned long nrpages; /* number of total pages */
> pgoff_t writeback_index;/* writeback starts here */
> + unsigned long writeback_cycle_time;
> const struct address_space_operations *a_ops; /* methods */
> unsigned long flags; /* error bits/gfp mask */
> struct backing_dev_info *backing_dev_info; /* device readahead, etc */
> --- linux-next.orig/mm/page-writeback.c 2011-04-26 21:26:28.000000000 +0800
> +++ linux-next/mm/page-writeback.c 2011-04-26 21:33:47.000000000 +0800
> @@ -835,6 +835,9 @@ void tag_pages_for_writeback(struct addr
> cond_resched();
> /* We check 'start' to handle wrapping when end == ~0UL */
> } while (tagged >= WRITEBACK_TAG_BATCH && start);
> +
> + mapping_set_tagged_sync(mapping);
> + mapping->writeback_cycle_time = jiffies;
> }
Sorry the above "mapping->writeback_cycle_time = jiffies" is not
correct and shall be removed. It should be updated iff (index == 0).
Thanks,
Fengguang
> EXPORT_SYMBOL(tag_pages_for_writeback);
>
> @@ -872,7 +875,7 @@ int write_cache_pages(struct address_spa
> pgoff_t end; /* Inclusive */
> pgoff_t done_index;
> int range_whole = 0;
> - int tag;
> + int tag = PAGECACHE_TAG_DIRTY;
>
> pagevec_init(&pvec, 0);
> if (wbc->range_cyclic) {
> @@ -884,13 +887,19 @@ int write_cache_pages(struct address_spa
> if (wbc->range_start == 0 && wbc->range_end == LLONG_MAX)
> range_whole = 1;
> }
> - if (wbc->sync_mode == WB_SYNC_ALL)
> - tag = PAGECACHE_TAG_TOWRITE;
> - else
> - tag = PAGECACHE_TAG_DIRTY;
> + if (!index)
> + mapping->writeback_cycle_time = jiffies;
--
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