linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 2/5] writeback: stop periodic/background work on seeing sync works

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Message-ID: <20100803123922.GC3322@quack.suse.cz>
Date:	Tue, 3 Aug 2010 14:39:22 +0200
From:	Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>
To:	Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@...el.com>
Cc:	Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>, Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	LKML <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>,
	Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@...hat.com>,
	Mel Gorman <mel@....ul.ie>, Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@...il.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/5] writeback: stop periodic/background work on seeing
 sync works

On Tue 03-08-10 12:55:20, Jan Kara wrote:
> On Tue 03-08-10 11:01:25, Wu Fengguang wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 03, 2010 at 04:51:52AM +0800, Jan Kara wrote:
> > > On Fri 30-07-10 12:03:06, Wu Fengguang wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 12:20:27AM +0800, Jan Kara wrote:
> > > > > On Thu 29-07-10 19:51:44, Wu Fengguang wrote:
> > > > > > The periodic/background writeback can run forever. So when any
> > > > > > sync work is enqueued, increase bdi->sync_works to notify the
> > > > > > active non-sync works to exit. Non-sync works queued after sync
> > > > > > works won't be affected.
> > > > >   Hmm, wouldn't it be simpler logic to just make for_kupdate and
> > > > > for_background work always yield when there's some other work to do (as
> > > > > they are livelockable from the definition of the target they have) and
> > > > > make sure any other work isn't livelockable?
> > > > 
> > > > Good idea!
> > > > 
> > > > > The only downside is that
> > > > > non-livelockable work cannot be "fair" in the sense that we cannot switch
> > > > > inodes after writing MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES.
> > > > 
> > > > Cannot switch indoes _before_ finish with the current
> > > > MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES batch? 
> > >   Well, even after writing all those MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES. Because what you
> > > want to do in a non-livelockable work is: take inode, write it, never look at
> > > it again for this work. Because if you later return to the inode, it can
> > > have newer dirty pages and thus you cannot really avoid livelock. Of
> > > course, this all assumes .nr_to_write isn't set to something small. That
> > > avoids the livelock as well.
> > 
> > I do have a poor man's solution that can handle this case.
> > https://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux-fsdevel/2009/10/7/6476473/thread
> > It may do more extra works, but will stop livelock in theory.
>   So I don't think sync work on it's own is a problem. There we can just
> give up any fairness and just go inode by inode. IMHO it's much simpler that
> way. The remaining types of work we have are "for_reclaim" and then ones
> triggered by filesystems to get rid of delayed allocated data. These cases
> can easily have well defined and low nr_to_write so they wouldn't be
> livelockable either. What do you think?
  Fengguang, how about merging also the attached simple patch together with
my fix? With these two patches, I'm not able to trigger any sync livelock
while without one of them I hit them quite easily...

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

View attachment "0001-mm-Avoid-resetting-wb_start-after-each-writeback-ro.patch" of type "text/x-patch" (1878 bytes)