The max-pause limit helps to keep the sleep time inside balance_dirty_pages() within MAX_PAUSE=200ms. The 200ms max sleep means per task rate limit of 8pages/200ms=160KB/s when dirty exceeded, which normally is enough to stop dirtiers from continue pushing the dirty pages high, unless there are a sufficient large number of slow dirtiers (eg. 500 tasks doing 160KB/s will still sum up to 80MB/s, exceeding the write bandwidth of a slow disk and hence accumulating more and more dirty pages). The pass-good limit helps to let go of the good bdi's in the presence of a blocked bdi (ie. NFS server not responding) or slow USB disk which for some reason build up a large number of initial dirty pages that refuse to go away anytime soon. For example, given two bdi's A and B and the initial state bdi_thresh_A = dirty_thresh / 2 bdi_thresh_B = dirty_thresh / 2 bdi_dirty_A = dirty_thresh / 2 bdi_dirty_B = dirty_thresh / 2 Then A get blocked, after a dozen seconds bdi_thresh_A = 0 bdi_thresh_B = dirty_thresh bdi_dirty_A = dirty_thresh / 2 bdi_dirty_B = dirty_thresh / 2 The (bdi_dirty_B < bdi_thresh_B) test is now useless and the dirty pages will be effectively throttled by condition (nr_dirty < dirty_thresh). This has two problems: (1) we lose the protections for light dirtiers (2) balance_dirty_pages() effectively becomes IO-less because the (bdi_nr_reclaimable > bdi_thresh) test won't be true. This is good for IO, but balance_dirty_pages() loses an important way to break out of the loop which leads to more spread out throttle delays. DIRTY_PASSGOOD_AREA can eliminate the above issues. The only problem is, DIRTY_PASSGOOD_AREA needs to be defined as 2 to fully cover the above example while this patch uses the more conservative value 8 so as not to surprise people with too many dirty pages than expected. The max-pause limit won't noticeably impact the speed dirty pages are knocked down when there is a sudden drop of global/bdi dirty thresholds. Because the heavy dirties will be throttled below 160KB/s which is slow enough. It does help to avoid long dirty throttle delays and especially will make light dirtiers more responsive. Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang --- include/linux/writeback.h | 21 +++++++++++++++++++++ mm/page-writeback.c | 28 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2 files changed, 49 insertions(+) --- linux-next.orig/include/linux/writeback.h 2011-06-23 10:31:40.000000000 +0800 +++ linux-next/include/linux/writeback.h 2011-06-23 10:31:40.000000000 +0800 @@ -7,6 +7,27 @@ #include #include +/* + * The 1/16 region above the global dirty limit will be put to maximum pauses: + * + * (limit, limit + limit/DIRTY_MAXPAUSE_AREA) + * + * The 1/16 region above the max-pause region, dirty exceeded bdi's will be put + * to loops: + * + * (limit + limit/DIRTY_MAXPAUSE_AREA, limit + limit/DIRTY_PASSGOOD_AREA) + * + * Further beyond, all dirtier tasks will enter a loop waiting (possibly long + * time) for the dirty pages to drop, unless written enough pages. + * + * The global dirty threshold is normally equal to the global dirty limit, + * except when the system suddenly allocates a lot of anonymous memory and + * knocks down the global dirty threshold quickly, in which case the global + * dirty limit will follow down slowly to prevent livelocking all dirtier tasks. + */ +#define DIRTY_MAXPAUSE_AREA 16 +#define DIRTY_PASSGOOD_AREA 8 + struct backing_dev_info; /* --- linux-next.orig/mm/page-writeback.c 2011-06-23 10:31:40.000000000 +0800 +++ linux-next/mm/page-writeback.c 2011-06-23 10:59:47.000000000 +0800 @@ -399,6 +399,11 @@ unsigned long determine_dirtyable_memory return x + 1; /* Ensure that we never return 0 */ } +static unsigned long hard_dirty_limit(unsigned long thresh) +{ + return max(thresh, global_dirty_limit); +} + /* * global_dirty_limits - background-writeback and dirty-throttling thresholds * @@ -716,6 +721,29 @@ static void balance_dirty_pages(struct a io_schedule_timeout(pause); trace_balance_dirty_wait(bdi); + dirty_thresh = hard_dirty_limit(dirty_thresh); + /* + * max-pause area. If dirty exceeded but still within this + * area, no need to sleep for more than 200ms: (a) 8 pages per + * 200ms is typically more than enough to curb heavy dirtiers; + * (b) the pause time limit makes the dirtiers more responsive. + */ + if (nr_dirty < dirty_thresh + + dirty_thresh / DIRTY_MAXPAUSE_AREA && + time_after(jiffies, start_time + MAX_PAUSE)) + break; + /* + * pass-good area. When some bdi gets blocked (eg. NFS server + * not responding), or write bandwidth dropped dramatically due + * to concurrent reads, or dirty threshold suddenly dropped and + * the dirty pages cannot be brought down anytime soon (eg. on + * slow USB stick), at least let go of the good bdi's. + */ + if (nr_dirty < dirty_thresh + + dirty_thresh / DIRTY_PASSGOOD_AREA && + bdi_dirty < bdi_thresh) + break; + /* * Increase the delay for each loop, up to our previous * default of taking a 100ms nap. -- 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/