linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 8/8] vmscan: Kick flusher threads to clean pages when reclaim is encountering dirty pages

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Message-ID: <20100726125717.GS5300@csn.ul.ie>
Date:	Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:57:17 +0100
From:	Mel Gorman <mel@....ul.ie>
To:	Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@...el.com>
Cc:	"linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	"linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>,
	"linux-mm@...ck.org" <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
	Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com>,
	Chris Mason <chris.mason@...cle.com>,
	Nick Piggin <npiggin@...e.de>, Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>,
	Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>,
	Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
	KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@...fujitsu.com>,
	KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@...fujitsu.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 8/8] vmscan: Kick flusher threads to clean pages when
	reclaim is encountering dirty pages

On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 07:27:09PM +0800, Wu Fengguang wrote:
> > > > @@ -933,13 +934,16 @@ keep_dirty:
> > > >  		VM_BUG_ON(PageLRU(page) || PageUnevictable(page));
> > > >  	}
> > > >  
> > > > +	/*
> > > > +	 * If reclaim is encountering dirty pages, it may be because
> > > > +	 * dirty pages are reaching the end of the LRU even though
> > > > +	 * the dirty_ratio may be satisified. In this case, wake
> > > > +	 * flusher threads to pro-actively clean some pages
> > > > +	 */
> > > > +	wakeup_flusher_threads(laptop_mode ? 0 : nr_dirty + nr_dirty / 2);
> > > 
> > > Ah it's very possible that nr_dirty==0 here! Then you are hitting the
> > > number of dirty pages down to 0 whether or not pageout() is called.
> > > 
> > 
> > True, this has been fixed to only wakeup flusher threads when this is
> > the file LRU, dirty pages have been encountered and the caller has
> > sc->may_writepage.
> 
> OK.
> 
> > > Another minor issue is, the passed (nr_dirty + nr_dirty / 2) is
> > > normally a small number, much smaller than MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES.
> > > The flusher will sync at least MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES pages, this is good
> > > for efficiency.
> > > And it seems good to let the flusher write much more
> > > than nr_dirty pages to safeguard a reasonable large
> > > vmscan-head-to-first-dirty-LRU-page margin. So it would be enough to
> > > update the comments.
> > > 
> > 
> > Ok, the reasoning had been to flush a number of pages that was related
> > to the scanning rate but if that is inefficient for the flusher, I'll
> > use MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES.
> 
> It would be better to pass something like (nr_dirty * N).
> MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES may be increased to 128MB in the future, which is
> obviously too large as a parameter. When the batch size is increased
> to 128MB, the writeback code may be improved somehow to not exceed the
> nr_pages limit too much.
> 

What might be a useful value for N? 1.5 appears to work reasonably well
to create a window of writeback ahead of the scanner but it's a bit
arbitrary.

-- 
Mel Gorman
Part-time Phd Student                          Linux Technology Center
University of Limerick                         IBM Dublin Software Lab
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