After making dirty a 100M file, the normal behavior is to start the writeback for all data after 30s delays. But sometimes the following happens instead: - after 30s: ~4M - after 5s: ~4M - after 5s: all remaining 92M Some analyze shows that the internal io dispatch queues goes like this: s_io s_more_io ------------------------- 1) 100M,1K 0 2) 1K 96M 3) 0 96M 1) initial state with a 100M file and a 1K file 2) 4M written, nr_to_write <= 0, so write more 3) 1K written, nr_to_write > 0, no more writes(BUG) nr_to_write > 0 in (3) fools the upper layer to think that data have all been written out. The big dirty file is actually still sitting in s_more_io. We cannot simply splice s_more_io back to s_io as soon as s_io becomes empty, and let the loop in generic_sync_sb_inodes() continue: this may starve newly expired inodes in s_dirty. It is also not an option to draw inodes from both s_more_io and s_dirty, an let the loop go on: this might lead to live locks, and might also starve other superblocks in sync time(well kupdate may still starve some superblocks, that's another bug). We have to return when a full scan of s_io completes. So nr_to_write > 0 does not necessarily mean that "all data are written". This patch introduces a flag writeback_control.more_io to indicate this situation. With it the big dirty file no longer has to wait for the next kupdate invocation 5s later. Cc: David Chinner Cc: Ken Chen Cc: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Fengguang Wu --- fs/fs-writeback.c | 2 ++ include/linux/writeback.h | 1 + mm/page-writeback.c | 9 ++++++--- 3 files changed, 9 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) --- linux-2.6.23-rc2-mm2.orig/fs/fs-writeback.c +++ linux-2.6.23-rc2-mm2/fs/fs-writeback.c @@ -472,6 +472,8 @@ sync_sb_inodes(struct super_block *sb, s if (wbc->nr_to_write <= 0) break; } + if (!list_empty(&sb->s_more_io)) + wbc->more_io = 1; return; /* Leave any unwritten inodes on s_io */ } --- linux-2.6.23-rc2-mm2.orig/include/linux/writeback.h +++ linux-2.6.23-rc2-mm2/include/linux/writeback.h @@ -61,6 +61,7 @@ struct writeback_control { unsigned for_reclaim:1; /* Invoked from the page allocator */ unsigned for_writepages:1; /* This is a writepages() call */ unsigned range_cyclic:1; /* range_start is cyclic */ + unsigned more_io:1; /* more io to be dispatched */ void *fs_private; /* For use by ->writepages() */ }; --- linux-2.6.23-rc2-mm2.orig/mm/page-writeback.c +++ linux-2.6.23-rc2-mm2/mm/page-writeback.c @@ -382,6 +382,7 @@ static void background_writeout(unsigned global_page_state(NR_UNSTABLE_NFS) < background_thresh && min_pages <= 0) break; + wbc.more_io = 0; wbc.encountered_congestion = 0; wbc.nr_to_write = MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES; wbc.pages_skipped = 0; @@ -389,8 +390,9 @@ static void background_writeout(unsigned min_pages -= MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES - wbc.nr_to_write; if (wbc.nr_to_write > 0 || wbc.pages_skipped > 0) { /* Wrote less than expected */ - congestion_wait(WRITE, HZ/10); - if (!wbc.encountered_congestion) + if (wbc.encountered_congestion || wbc.more_io) + congestion_wait(WRITE, HZ/10); + else break; } } @@ -455,11 +457,12 @@ static void wb_kupdate(unsigned long arg global_page_state(NR_UNSTABLE_NFS) + (inodes_stat.nr_inodes - inodes_stat.nr_unused); while (nr_to_write > 0) { + wbc.more_io = 0; wbc.encountered_congestion = 0; wbc.nr_to_write = MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES; writeback_inodes(&wbc); if (wbc.nr_to_write > 0) { - if (wbc.encountered_congestion) + if (wbc.encountered_congestion || wbc.more_io) congestion_wait(WRITE, HZ/10); else break; /* All the old data is written */ -- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/