[<prev] [next>] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]
Message-ID: <C60129DA.EB0F%jos@hyves.nl>
Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:03:38 +0200
From: Jos Houtman <jos@...es.nl>
To: "linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@...el.com>
Subject: RE: [PATCH 0/7] Per-bdi writeback flusher threads
I tried the write-back branch from the 2.6-block tree.
And I can atleast confirm that it works, atleast in relation to the
writeback not keeping up when the device was congested before it wrote a
1024 pages.
See: http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/3/22/83 for a bit more information.
But the second problem seen in that thread, a write-starve-read problem does
not seem to solved. In this problem the writes of the writeback algorithm
starve the ongoing reads, no matter what io-scheduler is picked.
For good measure I also applied the blk-latency patches on top of the
writeback branch, this did not improve anything. Nor did lowering
max_sectors_kb, as linus suggested in the IO latency thread.
As for a reproducible test-case: the simplest I could come up with was
modifying the fsync-tester not to fsync, but letting the normal writeback
handle it. And starting a separate process that tries to sequentially read a
file from the same device. The read performance drops to a bare minimum as
soon as the writeback algorithm kicks in.
Jos
--
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/
Powered by blists - more mailing lists