Date:   Wed, 18 Dec 2019 09:33:01 +0100
From:   Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>
To:     Paul Richards <paul.richards@...il.com>
Cc:     Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>, linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Query about ext4 commit interval vs dirty_expire_centisecs

On Tue 17-12-19 14:42:48, Paul Richards wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Dec 2019 at 15:59, Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz> wrote:
> >
> > Hello!
> >
> > On Tue 19-11-19 08:47:31, Paul Richards wrote:
> > > I'm trying to understand the interaction between the ext4 `commit`
> > > interval option, and the `vm.dirty_expire_centisecs` tuneable.
> > >
> > > The ext4 `commit` documentation says:
> > >
> > > > Ext4 can be told to sync all its data and metadata every 'nrsec' seconds. The default value is 5 seconds. This means that if you lose your power, you will lose as much as the latest 5 seconds of work (your filesystem will not be damaged though, thanks to the journaling).
> > >
> > > The `dirty_expire_centisecs` documentation says:
> > >
> > > > This tunable is used to define when dirty data is old enough to be eligible for writeout by the kernel flusher threads. It is expressed in 100'ths of a second. Data which has been dirty in-memory for longer than this interval will be written out next time a flusher thread wakes up.
> > >
> > >
> > > Superficially these sound like they have a very similar effect.  They
> > > periodically flush out data that hasn't been explicitly fsync'd by the
> > > application.  I'd like to understand a bit more the interaction
> > > between these.
> >
> > Yes, the effect is rather similar but not quite the same. The first thing
> > to observe is kind of obvious fact that ext4 commit interval influences
> > just the particular filesystem while dirty_expire_centisecs influences
> > behavior of global writeback over all filesystems.
> >
> > Secondly, commit interval is really the maximum age of ext4 transation.  So
> > if there is metadata change pending in the journal, it will become
> > persistent at latest after this time. So for say 'mkdir' that will be
> > persistent at latest after this time. For data operations things are more
> > complex. E.g. when delayed allocation is used (which is the default), the
> > change gets logged in the journal only during writeback. So it can take up
> > to dirty_expire_centisecs for data to be written back from page cache, that
> > results in filesystem journalling block allocations etc. and then it can
> > take upto commit interval for these changes to become persistent. So in
> > this case the intervals add up. There are also other special cases
> > somewhere in between but generally it is reasonable to assume that data gets
> > automatically persistent in dirty_expire_centisecs + commit_interval time.
> > Note both these times are actually times when writeback is triggered so
> > if the disk gets too busy, the actual time when data is completely on disk
> > may be much higher.
> >
> 
> Thanks for taking the time to reply!
> 
> Since automatic persisting of data occurs only after
> dirty_expire_centisecs + commit_interval,
> should the ext4 docs be corrected?  They currently state (for the
> commit interval option):
> 
> "The default value is 5 seconds. This means that if you lose
> your power, you will lose as much as the latest 5 seconds of work"

Yes, probably that should be clarified. Where did you find this wording?
Because my ext4 manpage just states:

        commit=nrsec
              Start  a  journal commit every nrsec seconds.  The default value
              is 5 seconds.  Zero means default.

								Honza
-- 
Jan Kara <jack@...e.com>
SUSE Labs, CR

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