linux-kernel - Re: Dirty deleted files cause pointless I/O storms (unless truncated first)

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:	Tue, 21 Jan 2014 15:46:32 +1100
From:	Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com>
To:	Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>
Cc:	"linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	"linux-mm@...ck.org" <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
	Linux FS Devel <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Dirty deleted files cause pointless I/O storms (unless truncated
 first)

On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 04:59:23PM -0800, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> The code below runs quickly for a few iterations, and then it slows
> down and the whole system becomes laggy for far too long.
> 
> Removing the sync_file_range call results in no I/O being performed at
> all (which means that the kernel isn't totally screwing this up), and
> changing "4096" to SIZE causes lots of I/O but without
> the going-out-to-lunch bit (unsurprisingly).

More details please. hardware, storage, kernel version, etc.

I can't reproduce any slowdown with the code as posted on a VM
running 3.31-rc5 with 16GB RAM and an SSD w/ ext4 or XFS. The
workload is only generating about 80 IOPS on ext4 so even a slow
spindle should be able handle this without problems...

> Surprisingly, uncommenting the ftruncate call seems to fix the
> problem.  This suggests that all the necessary infrastructure to avoid
> wasting time writing to deleted files is there but that it's not
> getting used.

Not surprising at all - if it's stuck in a writeback loop somewhere,
truncating the file will terminate writeback because it end up being
past EOF and so stops immediately...

Cheers,

Dave.
-- 
Dave Chinner
david@...morbit.com
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/