The dirty_ratio was siliently limited in global_dirty_limits() to >= 5%. This is not a user expected behavior. And it's inconsistent with calc_period_shift(), which uses the plain vm_dirty_ratio value. Let's rip the arbitrary internal bound. It may impact some very weird user space applications. However we are going to dynamicly sizing the dirty limits anyway, which may well break such applications, too. At the same time, fix balance_dirty_pages() to work with the dirty_thresh=0 case. This allows applications to proceed when dirty+writeback pages are all cleaned. And ">" fits with the name "exceeded" better than ">=" does. Neil think it is an aesthetic improvement as well as a functional one :) CC: Jan Kara Proposed-by: Con Kolivas Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel Reviewed-by: Neil Brown Reviewed-by: KOSAKI Motohiro Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang --- fs/fs-writeback.c | 2 +- mm/page-writeback.c | 16 +++++----------- 2 files changed, 6 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-) --- linux-next.orig/mm/page-writeback.c 2010-08-29 08:10:30.000000000 +0800 +++ linux-next/mm/page-writeback.c 2010-08-29 08:12:08.000000000 +0800 @@ -415,14 +415,8 @@ void global_dirty_limits(unsigned long * if (vm_dirty_bytes) dirty = DIV_ROUND_UP(vm_dirty_bytes, PAGE_SIZE); - else { - int dirty_ratio; - - dirty_ratio = vm_dirty_ratio; - if (dirty_ratio < 5) - dirty_ratio = 5; - dirty = (dirty_ratio * available_memory) / 100; - } + else + dirty = (vm_dirty_ratio * available_memory) / 100; if (dirty_background_bytes) background = DIV_ROUND_UP(dirty_background_bytes, PAGE_SIZE); @@ -510,7 +504,7 @@ static void balance_dirty_pages(struct a * catch-up. This avoids (excessively) small writeouts * when the bdi limits are ramping up. */ - if (nr_reclaimable + nr_writeback < + if (nr_reclaimable + nr_writeback <= (background_thresh + dirty_thresh) / 2) break; @@ -542,8 +536,8 @@ static void balance_dirty_pages(struct a * the last resort safeguard. */ dirty_exceeded = - (bdi_nr_reclaimable + bdi_nr_writeback >= bdi_thresh) - || (nr_reclaimable + nr_writeback >= dirty_thresh); + (bdi_nr_reclaimable + bdi_nr_writeback > bdi_thresh) + || (nr_reclaimable + nr_writeback > dirty_thresh); if (!dirty_exceeded) break; --- linux-next.orig/fs/fs-writeback.c 2010-08-29 08:12:51.000000000 +0800 +++ linux-next/fs/fs-writeback.c 2010-08-29 08:12:53.000000000 +0800 @@ -574,7 +574,7 @@ static inline bool over_bground_thresh(v global_dirty_limits(&background_thresh, &dirty_thresh); return (global_page_state(NR_FILE_DIRTY) + - global_page_state(NR_UNSTABLE_NFS) >= background_thresh); + global_page_state(NR_UNSTABLE_NFS) > background_thresh); } /* -- 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/