linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 03/15] writeback: introduce writeback_control.inodes

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Message-Id: <20110607160313.86fb31df.akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Date:	Tue, 7 Jun 2011 16:03:13 -0700
From:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@...el.com>
Cc:	Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>, Mel Gorman <mel@....ul.ie>,
	Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com>,
	Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
	<linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 03/15] writeback: introduce
 writeback_control.inodes_cleaned

On Wed, 08 Jun 2011 05:32:39 +0800
Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@...el.com> wrote:

> The flusher works on dirty inodes in batches, and may quit prematurely
> if the batch of inodes happen to be metadata-only dirtied: in this case
> wbc->nr_to_write won't be decreased at all, which stands for "no pages
> written" but also mis-interpreted as "no progress".
> 
> So introduce writeback_control.inodes_cleaned to count the inodes get
> cleaned.  A non-zero value means there are some progress on writeback,
> in which case more writeback can be tried.

Yes, that makes sense.  I had a workload which demonstrated/exploited
this nine years ago but I never got around to fixing it, never told
anyone and nobody noticed ;)

> +	long inodes_cleaned;		/* # of inodes cleaned */

nanonit: I'd call this inodes_written, because they may not actually be
clean.
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