linux-kernel - Re: [PATCHSET v3][RFC] Make background writeback not suck

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Date:	Fri, 1 Apr 2016 11:46:23 +1100
From:	Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com>
To:	Jens Axboe <axboe@...com>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-block@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCHSET v3][RFC] Make background writeback not suck

On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 08:29:35AM -0600, Jens Axboe wrote:
> On 03/31/2016 02:24 AM, Dave Chinner wrote:
> >On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 09:07:48AM -0600, Jens Axboe wrote:
> >>Hi,
> >>
> >>This patchset isn't as much a final solution, as it's demonstration
> >>of what I believe is a huge issue. Since the dawn of time, our
> >>background buffered writeback has sucked. When we do background
> >>buffered writeback, it should have little impact on foreground
> >>activity. That's the definition of background activity... But for as
> >>long as I can remember, heavy buffered writers has not behaved like
> >>that. For instance, if I do something like this:
> >>
> >>$ dd if=/dev/zero of=foo bs=1M count=10k
> >>
> >>on my laptop, and then try and start chrome, it basically won't start
> >>before the buffered writeback is done. Or, for server oriented
> >>workloads, where installation of a big RPM (or similar) adversely
> >>impacts data base reads or sync writes. When that happens, I get people
> >>yelling at me.
> >>
> >>Last time I posted this, I used flash storage as the example. But
> >>this works equally well on rotating storage. Let's run a test case
> >>that writes a lot. This test writes 50 files, each 100M, on XFS on
> >>a regular hard drive. While this happens, we attempt to read
> >>another file with fio.
> >>
> >>Writers:
> >>
> >>$ time (./write-files ; sync)
> >>real	1m6.304s
> >>user	0m0.020s
> >>sys	0m12.210s
> >
> >Great. So a basic IO tests looks good - let's through something more
> >complex at it. Say, a benchmark I've been using for years to stress
> >the Io subsystem, the filesystem and memory reclaim all at the same
> >time: a concurent fsmark inode creation test.
> >(first google hit https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/9/10/46)
> 
> Is that how you are invoking it as well same arguments?

Yes. And the VM is exactly the same, too - 16p/16GB RAM. Cut down
version of the script I use:

#!/bin/bash

QUOTA=
MKFSOPTS=
NFILES=100000
DEV=/dev/vdc
LOGBSIZE=256k
FSMARK=/home/dave/src/fs_mark-3.3/fs_mark
MNT=/mnt/scratch

while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do
        case "$1" in
        -q)     QUOTA="uquota,gquota,pquota" ;;
        -N)     NFILES=$2 ; shift ;;
        -d)     DEV=$2 ; shift ;;
        -l)     LOGBSIZE=$2; shift ;;
        --)     shift ; break ;;
        esac
        shift
done
MKFSOPTS="$MKFSOPTS $*"

echo QUOTA=$QUOTA
echo MKFSOPTS=$MKFSOPTS
echo DEV=$DEV

sudo umount $MNT > /dev/null 2>&1
sudo mkfs.xfs -f $MKFSOPTS $DEV
sudo mount -o nobarrier,logbsize=$LOGBSIZE,$QUOTA $DEV $MNT
sudo chmod 777 $MNT
sudo sh -c "echo 1 > /proc/sys/fs/xfs/stats_clear"
time $FSMARK  -D  10000  -S0  -n  $NFILES  -s  0  -L  32 \
        -d  $MNT/0  -d  $MNT/1 \
        -d  $MNT/2  -d  $MNT/3 \
        -d  $MNT/4  -d  $MNT/5 \
        -d  $MNT/6  -d  $MNT/7 \
        -d  $MNT/8  -d  $MNT/9 \
        -d  $MNT/10  -d  $MNT/11 \
        -d  $MNT/12  -d  $MNT/13 \
        -d  $MNT/14  -d  $MNT/15 \
        | tee >(stats --trim-outliers | tail -1 1>&2)
sync
sudo umount /mnt/scratch
$

> >>The above was run without scsi-mq, and with using the deadline scheduler,
> >>results with CFQ are similary depressing for this test. So IO scheduling
> >>is in place for this test, it's not pure blk-mq without scheduling.
> >
> >virtio in guest, XFS direct IO -> no-op -> scsi in host.
> 
> That has write back caching enabled on the guest, correct?

No. It uses virtio,cache=none (that's the "XFS Direct IO" bit above).
Sorry for not being clear about that.

Cheers,

Dave.
-- 
Dave Chinner
david@...morbit.com