Commit Graph

120 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Wu Fengguang
3a2e9a5a2a writeback: balance_dirty_pages() shall write more than dirtied pages
Some filesystem may choose to write much more than ratelimit_pages
before calling balance_dirty_pages_ratelimited_nr(). So it is safer to
determine number to write based on real number of dirtied pages.

Otherwise it is possible that
  loop {
    btrfs_file_write():     dirty 1024 pages
    balance_dirty_pages():  write up to 48 pages (= ratelimit_pages * 1.5)
  }
in which the writeback rate cannot keep up with dirty rate, and the
dirty pages go all the way beyond dirty_thresh.

The increased write_chunk may make the dirtier more bumpy.
So filesystems shall be take care not to dirty too much at
a time (eg. > 4MB) without checking the ratelimit.

Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
2009-09-25 18:08:24 +02:00
Wu Fengguang
adea02a1be mm: count only reclaimable lru pages
global_lru_pages() / zone_lru_pages() can be used in two ways:
- to estimate max reclaimable pages in determine_dirtyable_memory()
- to calculate the slab scan ratio

When swap is full or not present, the anon lru lists are not reclaimable
and also won't be scanned.  So the anon pages shall not be counted in both
usage scenarios.  Also rename to _reclaimable_pages: now they are counting
the possibly reclaimable lru pages.

It can greatly (and correctly) increase the slab scan rate under high
memory pressure (when most file pages have been reclaimed and swap is
full/absent), thus reduce false OOM kills.

Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org>
Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com>
Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Barnes <jbarnes@virtuousgeek.org>
Cc: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Cc: "Li, Ming Chun" <macli@brc.ubc.ca>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-09-22 07:17:30 -07:00
Jens Axboe
87c6a9b253 writeback: make balance_dirty_pages() gradually back more off
Currently it just sleeps for a very short time, just 1 jiffy. If
we keep looping in there, continually delay for a little longer
of up to 100msec in total. That was the old limit for congestion
wait.

Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
2009-09-21 15:40:33 +02:00
Jens Axboe
3542a5c0de writeback: don't use schedule_timeout() without setting runstate
Just use schedule_timeout_interruptible(), saves a call to
set_current_state().

Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
2009-09-21 15:40:33 +02:00
Jens Axboe
b6e51316da writeback: separate starting of sync vs opportunistic writeback
bdi_start_writeback() is currently split into two paths, one for
WB_SYNC_NONE and one for WB_SYNC_ALL. Add bdi_sync_writeback()
for WB_SYNC_ALL writeback and let bdi_start_writeback() handle
only WB_SYNC_NONE.

Push down the writeback_control allocation and only accept the
parameters that make sense for each function. This cleans up
the API considerably.

Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
2009-09-16 15:18:52 +02:00
Jens Axboe
cfc4ba5365 writeback: use RCU to protect bdi_list
Now that bdi_writeback_all() no longer handles integrity writeback,
it doesn't have to block anymore. This means that we can switch
bdi_list reader side protection to RCU.

Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
2009-09-16 15:18:51 +02:00
Jens Axboe
1fe06ad892 writeback: get rid of wbc->for_writepages
It's only set, it's never checked. Kill it.

Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
2009-09-16 15:16:18 +02:00
Linus Torvalds
ada3fa1505 Merge branch 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tj/percpu
* 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tj/percpu: (46 commits)
  powerpc64: convert to dynamic percpu allocator
  sparc64: use embedding percpu first chunk allocator
  percpu: kill lpage first chunk allocator
  x86,percpu: use embedding for 64bit NUMA and page for 32bit NUMA
  percpu: update embedding first chunk allocator to handle sparse units
  percpu: use group information to allocate vmap areas sparsely
  vmalloc: implement pcpu_get_vm_areas()
  vmalloc: separate out insert_vmalloc_vm()
  percpu: add chunk->base_addr
  percpu: add pcpu_unit_offsets[]
  percpu: introduce pcpu_alloc_info and pcpu_group_info
  percpu: move pcpu_lpage_build_unit_map() and pcpul_lpage_dump_cfg() upward
  percpu: add @align to pcpu_fc_alloc_fn_t
  percpu: make @dyn_size mandatory for pcpu_setup_first_chunk()
  percpu: drop @static_size from first chunk allocators
  percpu: generalize first chunk allocator selection
  percpu: build first chunk allocators selectively
  percpu: rename 4k first chunk allocator to page
  percpu: improve boot messages
  percpu: fix pcpu_reclaim() locking
  ...

Fix trivial conflict as by Tejun Heo in kernel/sched.c
2009-09-15 09:39:44 -07:00
Jens Axboe
03ba3782e8 writeback: switch to per-bdi threads for flushing data
This gets rid of pdflush for bdi writeout and kupdated style cleaning.
pdflush writeout suffers from lack of locality and also requires more
threads to handle the same workload, since it has to work in a
non-blocking fashion against each queue. This also introduces lumpy
behaviour and potential request starvation, since pdflush can be starved
for queue access if others are accessing it. A sample ffsb workload that
does random writes to files is about 8% faster here on a simple SATA drive
during the benchmark phase. File layout also seems a LOT more smooth in
vmstat:

 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in    cs us sy id wa
 0  1      0 608848   2652 375372    0    0     0 71024  604    24  1 10 48 42
 0  1      0 549644   2712 433736    0    0     0 60692  505    27  1  8 48 44
 1  0      0 476928   2784 505192    0    0     4 29540  553    24  0  9 53 37
 0  1      0 457972   2808 524008    0    0     0 54876  331    16  0  4 38 58
 0  1      0 366128   2928 614284    0    0     4 92168  710    58  0 13 53 34
 0  1      0 295092   3000 684140    0    0     0 62924  572    23  0  9 53 37
 0  1      0 236592   3064 741704    0    0     4 58256  523    17  0  8 48 44
 0  1      0 165608   3132 811464    0    0     0 57460  560    21  0  8 54 38
 0  1      0 102952   3200 873164    0    0     4 74748  540    29  1 10 48 41
 0  1      0  48604   3252 926472    0    0     0 53248  469    29  0  7 47 45

where vanilla tends to fluctuate a lot in the creation phase:

 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in    cs us sy id wa
 1  1      0 678716   5792 303380    0    0     0 74064  565    50  1 11 52 36
 1  0      0 662488   5864 319396    0    0     4   352  302   329  0  2 47 51
 0  1      0 599312   5924 381468    0    0     0 78164  516    55  0  9 51 40
 0  1      0 519952   6008 459516    0    0     4 78156  622    56  1 11 52 37
 1  1      0 436640   6092 541632    0    0     0 82244  622    54  0 11 48 41
 0  1      0 436640   6092 541660    0    0     0     8  152    39  0  0 51 49
 0  1      0 332224   6200 644252    0    0     4 102800  728    46  1 13 49 36
 1  0      0 274492   6260 701056    0    0     4 12328  459    49  0  7 50 43
 0  1      0 211220   6324 763356    0    0     0 106940  515    37  1 10 51 39
 1  0      0 160412   6376 813468    0    0     0  8224  415    43  0  6 49 45
 1  1      0  85980   6452 886556    0    0     4 113516  575    39  1 11 54 34
 0  2      0  85968   6452 886620    0    0     0  1640  158   211  0  0 46 54

A 10 disk test with btrfs performs 26% faster with per-bdi flushing. A
SSD based writeback test on XFS performs over 20% better as well, with
the throughput being very stable around 1GB/sec, where pdflush only
manages 750MB/sec and fluctuates wildly while doing so. Random buffered
writes to many files behave a lot better as well, as does random mmap'ed
writes.

A separate thread is added to sync the super blocks. In the long term,
adding sync_supers_bdi() functionality could get rid of this thread again.

Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
2009-09-11 09:20:25 +02:00
Jens Axboe
66f3b8e2e1 writeback: move dirty inodes from super_block to backing_dev_info
This is a first step at introducing per-bdi flusher threads. We should
have no change in behaviour, although sb_has_dirty_inodes() is now
ridiculously expensive, as there's no easy way to answer that question.
Not a huge problem, since it'll be deleted in subsequent patches.

Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
2009-09-11 09:20:25 +02:00
Tejun Heo
384be2b18a Merge branch 'percpu-for-linus' into percpu-for-next
Conflicts:
	arch/sparc/kernel/smp_64.c
	arch/x86/kernel/cpu/perf_counter.c
	arch/x86/kernel/setup_percpu.c
	drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq_ondemand.c
	mm/percpu.c

Conflicts in core and arch percpu codes are mostly from commit
ed78e1e078dd44249f88b1dd8c76dafb39567161 which substituted many
num_possible_cpus() with nr_cpu_ids.  As for-next branch has moved all
the first chunk allocators into mm/percpu.c, the changes are moved
from arch code to mm/percpu.c.

Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
2009-08-14 14:45:31 +09:00
Jens Axboe
8aa7e847d8 Fix congestion_wait() sync/async vs read/write confusion
Commit 1faa16d228 accidentally broke
the bdi congestion wait queue logic, causing us to wait on congestion
for WRITE (== 1) when we really wanted BLK_RW_ASYNC (== 0) instead.

Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
2009-07-10 20:31:53 +02:00
Tejun Heo
c43768cbb7 Merge branch 'master' into for-next
Pull linus#master to merge PER_CPU_DEF_ATTRIBUTES and alpha build fix
changes.  As alpha in percpu tree uses 'weak' attribute instead of
inline assembly, there's no need for __used attribute.

Conflicts:
	arch/alpha/include/asm/percpu.h
	arch/mn10300/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S
	include/linux/percpu-defs.h
2009-07-04 07:13:18 +09:00
Richard Kennedy
d7831a0bdf mm: prevent balance_dirty_pages() from doing too much work
balance_dirty_pages can overreact and move all of the dirty pages to
writeback unnecessarily.

balance_dirty_pages makes its decision to throttle based on the number of
dirty plus writeback pages that are over the calculated limit,so it will
continue to move pages even when there are plenty of pages in writeback
and less than the threshold still dirty.

This allows it to overshoot its limits and move all the dirty pages to
writeback while waiting for the drives to catch up and empty the writeback
list.

A simple fio test easily demonstrates this problem.

fio --name=f1 --directory=/disk1 --size=2G -rw=write --name=f2 --directory=/disk2 --size=1G --rw=write --startdelay=10

This is the simplest fix I could find, but I'm not entirely sure that it
alone will be enough for all cases.  But it certainly is an improvement on
my desktop machine writing to 2 disks.

Do we need something more for machines with large arrays where
bdi_threshold * number_of_drives is greater than the dirty_ratio ?

Signed-off-by: Richard Kennedy <richard@rsk.demon.co.uk>
Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Cc: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-06-30 18:56:01 -07:00
Tejun Heo
245b2e70ea percpu: clean up percpu variable definitions
Percpu variable definition is about to be updated such that all percpu
symbols including the static ones must be unique.  Update percpu
variable definitions accordingly.

* as,cfq: rename ioc_count uniquely

* cpufreq: rename cpu_dbs_info uniquely

* xen: move nesting_count out of xen_evtchn_do_upcall() and rename it

* mm: move ratelimits out of balance_dirty_pages_ratelimited_nr() and
  rename it

* ipv4,6: rename cookie_scratch uniquely

* x86 perf_counter: rename prev_left to pmc_prev_left, irq_entry to
  pmc_irq_entry and nmi_entry to pmc_nmi_entry

* perf_counter: rename disable_count to perf_disable_count

* ftrace: rename test_event_disable to ftrace_test_event_disable

* kmemleak: rename test_pointer to kmemleak_test_pointer

* mce: rename next_interval to mce_next_interval

[ Impact: percpu usage cleanups, no duplicate static percpu var names ]

Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Ivan Kokshaysky <ink@jurassic.park.msu.ru>
Cc: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
Cc: Dave Jones <davej@redhat.com>
Cc: Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@xensource.com>
Cc: linux-mm <linux-mm@kvack.org>
Cc: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com>
Cc: Li Zefan <lizf@cn.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
Cc: Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org>
2009-06-24 15:13:48 +09:00
H Hartley Sweeten
dcf975d585 mm/page-writeback.c: dirty limit type should be unsigned long
get_dirty_limits() calls clip_bdi_dirty_limit() and task_dirty_limit()
with variable pbdi_dirty as one of the arguments.  This variable is an
unsigned long * but both functions expect it to be a long *.  This causes
the following sparse warnings:

  warning: incorrect type in argument 3 (different signedness)
     expected long *pbdi_dirty
     got unsigned long *pbdi_dirty
  warning: incorrect type in argument 2 (different signedness)
     expected long *pdirty
     got unsigned long *pbdi_dirty

Fix the warnings by changing the long * to unsigned long * in both
functions.

Signed-off-by: H Hartley Sweeten <hsweeten@visionengravers.com>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-06-16 19:47:31 -07:00
Toshiyuki Okajima
22ef37eed6 page-writeback: fix the calculation of the oldest_jif in wb_kupdate()
wb_kupdate() function has a bug on linux-2.6.30-rc5.  This bug causes
generic_sync_sb_inodes() to start to write inodes back much earlier than
our expectations because it miscalculates oldest_jif in wb_kupdate().

This bug was introduced in 704503d836
('mm: fix proc_dointvec_userhz_jiffies "breakage"').

Signed-off-by: Toshiyuki Okajima <toshi.okajima@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
Cc: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-05-17 16:36:11 -07:00
Alexey Dobriyan
704503d836 mm: fix proc_dointvec_userhz_jiffies "breakage"
Addresses http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9838

On i386, HZ=1000, jiffies_to_clock_t() converts time in a somewhat strange
way from the user's point of view:

	# echo 500 >/proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs
	# cat /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs
	499

So, we have 5000 jiffies converted to only 499 clock ticks and reported
back.

TICK_NSEC = 999848
ACTHZ = 256039

Keeping in-kernel variable in units passed from userspace will fix issue
of course, but this probably won't be right for every sysctl.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes]
Signed-off-by: Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-04-01 08:59:13 -07:00
Edward Shishkin
e3a7cca1ef vfs: add/use account_page_dirtied()
Add a helper function account_page_dirtied().  Use that from two
callsites.  reiser4 adds a function which adds a third callsite.

Signed-off-by: Edward Shishkin<edward.shishkin@gmail.com>
Cc: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-04-01 08:59:12 -07:00
Wu Fengguang
1b5e62b42b writeback: double the dirty thresholds
Enlarge default dirty ratios from 5/10 to 10/20.  This fixes [Bug
#12809] iozone regression with 2.6.29-rc6.

The iozone benchmarks are performed on a 1200M file, with 8GB ram.

  iozone -i 0 -i 1 -i 2 -i 3 -i 4 -r 4k -s 64k -s 512m -s 1200m -b tmp.xls
  iozone -B -r 4k -s 64k -s 512m -s 1200m -b tmp.xls

The performance regression is triggered by commit 1cf6e7d83bf3(mm: task
dirty accounting fix), which makes more correct/thorough dirty
accounting.

The default 5/10 dirty ratios were picked (a) with the old dirty logic
and (b) largely at random and (c) designed to be aggressive.  In
particular, that (a) means that having fixed some of the dirty
accounting, maybe the real bug is now that it was always too aggressive,
just hidden by an accounting issue.

The enlarged 10/20 dirty ratios are just about enough to fix the regression.

[ We will have to look at how this affects the old fsync() latency issue,
  but that probably will need independent work.  - Linus ]

Cc: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Reported-by: "Lin, Ming M" <ming.m.lin@intel.com>
Tested-by: "Lin, Ming M" <ming.m.lin@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-03-26 11:01:11 -07:00
Nick Piggin
1cf6e7d83b mm: task dirty accounting fix
YAMAMOTO-san noticed that task_dirty_inc doesn't seem to be called properly for
cases where set_page_dirty is not used to dirty a page (eg. mark_buffer_dirty).

Additionally, there is some inconsistency about when task_dirty_inc is
called.  It is used for dirty balancing, however it even gets called for
__set_page_dirty_no_writeback.

So rather than increment it in a set_page_dirty wrapper, move it down to
exactly where the dirty page accounting stats are incremented.

Cc: YAMAMOTO Takashi <yamamoto@valinux.co.jp>
Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-02-18 15:37:54 -08:00
Nick Piggin
3a4c6800f3 Fix page writeback thinko, causing Berkeley DB slowdown
A bug was introduced into write_cache_pages cyclic writeout by commit
31a12666d8 ("mm: write_cache_pages cyclic
fix").  The intention (and comments) is that we should cycle back and
look for more dirty pages at the beginning of the file if there is no
more work to be done.

But the !done condition was dropped from the test.  This means that any
time the page writeout loop breaks (eg.  due to nr_to_write == 0), we
will set index to 0, then goto again.  This will set done_index to
index, then find done is set, so will proceed to the end of the
function.  When updating mapping->writeback_index for cyclic writeout,
we now use done_index == 0, so we're always cycling back to 0.

This seemed to be causing random mmap writes (slapadd and iozone) to
start writing more pages from the LRU and writeout would slowdown, and
caused bugzilla entry

	http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12604

about Berkeley DB slowing down dramatically.

With this patch, iozone random write performance is increased nearly
5x on my system (iozone -B -r 4k -s 64k -s 512m -s 1200m on ext2).

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Reported-and-tested-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-02-12 08:10:53 -08:00
Federico Cuello
89e1219004 writeback: fix break condition
Commit dcf6a79dda ("write-back: fix
nr_to_write counter") fixed nr_to_write counter, but didn't set the break
condition properly.

If nr_to_write == 0 after being decremented it will loop one more time
before setting done = 1 and breaking the loop.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes]
Cc: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
Acked-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-02-11 14:25:37 -08:00
Sven Wegener
fc3501d411 mm: fix dirty_bytes/dirty_background_bytes sysctls on 64bit arches
We need to pass an unsigned long as the minimum, because it gets casted
to an unsigned long in the sysctl handler. If we pass an int, we'll
access four more bytes on 64bit arches, resulting in a random minimum
value.

[rientjes@google.com: fix type of `old_bytes']
Signed-off-by: Sven Wegener <sven.wegener@stealer.net>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-02-11 14:25:35 -08:00
Artem Bityutskiy
dcf6a79dda write-back: fix nr_to_write counter
Commit 05fe478dd0 introduced some
@wbc->nr_to_write breakage.

It made the following changes:
 1. Decrement wbc->nr_to_write instead of nr_to_write
 2. Decrement wbc->nr_to_write _only_ if wbc->sync_mode == WB_SYNC_NONE
 3. If synced nr_to_write pages, stop only if if wbc->sync_mode ==
    WB_SYNC_NONE, otherwise keep going.

However, according to the commit message, the intention was to only make
change 3.  Change 1 is a bug.  Change 2 does not seem to be necessary,
and it breaks UBIFS expectations, so if needed, it should be done
separately later.  And change 2 does not seem to be documented in the
commit message.

This patch does the following:
 1. Undo changes 1 and 2
 2. Add a comment explaining change 3 (it very useful to have comments
    in _code_, not only in the commit).

Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
Acked-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-02-03 16:59:08 -08:00
David Rientjes
2da02997e0 mm: add dirty_background_bytes and dirty_bytes sysctls
This change introduces two new sysctls to /proc/sys/vm:
dirty_background_bytes and dirty_bytes.

dirty_background_bytes is the counterpart to dirty_background_ratio and
dirty_bytes is the counterpart to dirty_ratio.

With growing memory capacities of individual machines, it's no longer
sufficient to specify dirty thresholds as a percentage of the amount of
dirtyable memory over the entire system.

dirty_background_bytes and dirty_bytes specify quantities of memory, in
bytes, that represent the dirty limits for the entire system.  If either
of these values is set, its value represents the amount of dirty memory
that is needed to commence either background or direct writeback.

When a `bytes' or `ratio' file is written, its counterpart becomes a
function of the written value.  For example, if dirty_bytes is written to
be 8096, 8K of memory is required to commence direct writeback.
dirty_ratio is then functionally equivalent to 8K / the amount of
dirtyable memory:

	dirtyable_memory = free pages + mapped pages + file cache

	dirty_background_bytes = dirty_background_ratio * dirtyable_memory
		-or-
	dirty_background_ratio = dirty_background_bytes / dirtyable_memory

		AND

	dirty_bytes = dirty_ratio * dirtyable_memory
		-or-
	dirty_ratio = dirty_bytes / dirtyable_memory

Only one of dirty_background_bytes and dirty_background_ratio may be
specified at a time, and only one of dirty_bytes and dirty_ratio may be
specified.  When one sysctl is written, the other appears as 0 when read.

The `bytes' files operate on a page size granularity since dirty limits
are compared with ZVC values, which are in page units.

Prior to this change, the minimum dirty_ratio was 5 as implemented by
get_dirty_limits() although /proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio would show any user
written value between 0 and 100.  This restriction is maintained, but
dirty_bytes has a lower limit of only one page.

Also prior to this change, the dirty_background_ratio could not equal or
exceed dirty_ratio.  This restriction is maintained in addition to
restricting dirty_background_bytes.  If either background threshold equals
or exceeds that of the dirty threshold, it is implicitly set to half the
dirty threshold.

Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Andrea Righi <righi.andrea@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-01-06 15:59:03 -08:00
David Rientjes
364aeb2849 mm: change dirty limit type specifiers to unsigned long
The background dirty and dirty limits are better defined with type
specifiers of unsigned long since negative writeback thresholds are not
possible.

These values, as returned by get_dirty_limits(), are normally compared
with ZVC values to determine whether writeback shall commence or be
throttled.  Such page counts cannot be negative, so declaring the page
limits as signed is unnecessary.

Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Andrea Righi <righi.andrea@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-01-06 15:59:02 -08:00
Andrew Morton
82fd1a9a8c mm: write_cache_pages more terminate quickly
Now that we have the early-termination logic in place, it makes sense to
bail out early in all other cases where done is set to 1.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-01-06 15:59:00 -08:00
Nick Piggin
d5482cdf8a mm: write_cache_pages terminate quickly
Terminate the write_cache_pages loop upon encountering the first page past
end, without locking the page.  Pages cannot have their index change when
we have a reference on them (truncate, eg truncate_inode_pages_range
performs the same check without the page lock).

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-01-06 15:59:00 -08:00
Nick Piggin
515f4a037f mm: write_cache_pages optimise page cleaning
In write_cache_pages, if we get stuck behind another process that is
cleaning pages, we will be forced to wait for them to finish, then perform
our own writeout (if it was redirtied during the long wait), then wait for
that.

If a page under writeout is still clean, we can skip waiting for it (if
we're part of a data integrity sync, we'll be waiting for all writeout
pages afterwards, so we'll still be waiting for the other guy's write
that's cleaned the page).

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-01-06 15:58:59 -08:00
Nick Piggin
5a3d5c9813 mm: write_cache_pages cleanups
Get rid of some complex expressions from flow control statements, add a
comment, remove some duplicate code.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-01-06 15:58:59 -08:00
Nick Piggin
05fe478dd0 mm: write_cache_pages integrity fix
In write_cache_pages, nr_to_write is heeded even for data-integrity syncs,
so the function will return success after writing out nr_to_write pages,
even if that was not sufficient to guarantee data integrity.

The callers tend to set it to values that could break data interity
semantics easily in practice.  For example, nr_to_write can be set to
mapping->nr_pages * 2, however if a file has a single, dirty page, then
fsync is called, subsequent pages might be concurrently added and dirtied,
then write_cache_pages might writeout two of these newly dirty pages,
while not writing out the old page that should have been written out.

Fix this by ignoring nr_to_write if it is a data integrity sync.

This is a data integrity bug.

The reason this has been done in the past is to avoid stalling sync
operations behind page dirtiers.

 "If a file has one dirty page at offset 1000000000000000 then someone
  does an fsync() and someone else gets in first and starts madly writing
  pages at offset 0, we want to write that page at 1000000000000000.
  Somehow."

What we do today is return success after an arbitrary amount of pages are
written, whether or not we have provided the data-integrity semantics that
the caller has asked for.  Even this doesn't actually fix all stall cases
completely: in the above situation, if the file has a huge number of pages
in pagecache (but not dirty), then mapping->nrpages is going to be huge,
even if pages are being dirtied.

This change does indeed make the possibility of long stalls lager, and
that's not a good thing, but lying about data integrity is even worse.  We
have to either perform the sync, or return -ELINUXISLAME so at least the
caller knows what has happened.

There are subsequent competing approaches in the works to solve the stall
problems properly, without compromising data integrity.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-01-06 15:58:59 -08:00
Nick Piggin
00266770b8 mm: write_cache_pages writepage error fix
In write_cache_pages, if ret signals a real error, but we still have some
pages left in the pagevec, done would be set to 1, but the remaining pages
would continue to be processed and ret will be overwritten in the process.

It could easily be overwritten with success, and thus success will be
returned even if there is an error.  Thus the caller is told all writes
succeeded, wheras in reality some did not.

Fix this by bailing immediately if there is an error, and retaining the
first error code.

This is a data integrity bug.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-01-06 15:58:59 -08:00
Nick Piggin
bd19e012f6 mm: write_cache_pages early loop termination
We'd like to break out of the loop early in many situations, however the
existing code has been setting mapping->writeback_index past the final
page in the pagevec lookup for cyclic writeback.  This is a problem if we
don't process all pages up to the final page.

Currently the code mostly keeps writeback_index reasonable and hacked
around this by not breaking out of the loop or writing pages outside the
range in these cases.  Keep track of a real "done index" that enables us
to terminate the loop in a much more flexible manner.

Needed by the subsequent patch to preserve writepage errors, and then
further patches to break out of the loop early for other reasons.  However
there are no functional changes with this patch alone.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-01-06 15:58:59 -08:00
Nick Piggin
31a12666d8 mm: write_cache_pages cyclic fix
In write_cache_pages, scanned == 1 is supposed to mean that cyclic
writeback has circled through zero, thus we should not circle again.
However it gets set to 1 after the first successful pagevec lookup.  This
leads to cases where not enough data gets written.

Counterexample: file with first 10 pages dirty, writeback_index == 5,
nr_to_write == 10.  Then the 5 last pages will be found, and scanned will
be set to 1, after writing those out, we will not cycle back to get the
first 5.

Rework this logic, now we'll always cycle unless we started off from index
0.  When cycling, only write out as far as 1 page before the start page
from the first cycle (so we don't write parts of the file twice).

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-01-06 15:58:59 -08:00
Rik van Riel
4f98a2fee8 vmscan: split LRU lists into anon & file sets
Split the LRU lists in two, one set for pages that are backed by real file
systems ("file") and one for pages that are backed by memory and swap
("anon").  The latter includes tmpfs.

The advantage of doing this is that the VM will not have to scan over lots
of anonymous pages (which we generally do not want to swap out), just to
find the page cache pages that it should evict.

This patch has the infrastructure and a basic policy to balance how much
we scan the anon lists and how much we scan the file lists.  The big
policy changes are in separate patches.

[lee.schermerhorn@hp.com: collect lru meminfo statistics from correct offset]
[kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com: prevent incorrect oom under split_lru]
[kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com: fix pagevec_move_tail() doesn't treat unevictable page]
[hugh@veritas.com: memcg swapbacked pages active]
[hugh@veritas.com: splitlru: BDI_CAP_SWAP_BACKED]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix /proc/vmstat units]
[nishimura@mxp.nes.nec.co.jp: memcg: fix handling of shmem migration]
[kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com: adjust Quicklists field of /proc/meminfo]
[kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com: fix style issue of get_scan_ratio()]
Signed-off-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Lee Schermerhorn <Lee.Schermerhorn@hp.com>
Signed-off-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>
Signed-off-by: Daisuke Nishimura <nishimura@mxp.nes.nec.co.jp>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-10-20 08:50:25 -07:00
Aneesh Kumar K.V
17bc6c30cf vfs: Add no_nrwrite_index_update writeback control flag
If no_nrwrite_index_update is set we don't update nr_to_write and
address space writeback_index in write_cache_pages.  This change
enables a file system to skip these updates in write_cache_pages and do
them in the writepages() callback.  This patch will be followed by an
ext4 patch that make use of these new flags.

Signed-off-by: Aneesh Kumar K.V <aneesh.kumar@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
CC: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org
2008-10-16 10:09:17 -04:00
Aneesh Kumar K.V
74baaaaec8 vfs: Remove the range_cont writeback mode.
Ext4 was the only user of range_cont writeback mode and ext4 switched
to a different method. So remove the range_cont mode which is not used
in the kernel.

Signed-off-by: Aneesh Kumar K.V <aneesh.kumar@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
CC: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org
2008-10-14 09:21:02 -04:00
Francois Cami
e1f8e87449 Remove Andrew Morton's old email accounts
People can use the real name an an index into MAINTAINERS to find the
current email address.

Signed-off-by: Francois Cami <francois.cami@free.fr>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-10-16 11:21:32 -07:00
Nick Piggin
19fd623127 mm: spinlock tree_lock
mapping->tree_lock has no read lockers.  convert the lock from an rwlock
to a spinlock.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
Cc: Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>
Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@us.ibm.com>
Reviewed-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-07-26 12:00:06 -07:00
Linus Torvalds
8d2567a620 Merge branch 'for_linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tytso/ext4
* 'for_linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tytso/ext4: (61 commits)
  ext4: Documention update for new ordered mode and delayed allocation
  ext4: do not set extents feature from the kernel
  ext4: Don't allow nonextenst mount option for large filesystem
  ext4: Enable delalloc by default.
  ext4: delayed allocation i_blocks fix for stat
  ext4: fix delalloc i_disksize early update issue
  ext4: Handle page without buffers in ext4_*_writepage()
  ext4: Add ordered mode support for delalloc
  ext4: Invert lock ordering of page_lock and transaction start in delalloc
  mm: Add range_cont mode for writeback
  ext4: delayed allocation ENOSPC handling
  percpu_counter: new function percpu_counter_sum_and_set
  ext4: Add delayed allocation support in data=writeback mode
  vfs: add hooks for ext4's delayed allocation support
  jbd2: Remove data=ordered mode support using jbd buffer heads
  ext4: Use new framework for data=ordered mode in JBD2
  jbd2: Implement data=ordered mode handling via inodes
  vfs: export filemap_fdatawrite_range()
  ext4: Fix lock inversion in ext4_ext_truncate()
  ext4: Invert the locking order of page_lock and transaction start
  ...
2008-07-15 08:36:38 -07:00
Aneesh Kumar K.V
06d6cf6959 mm: Add range_cont mode for writeback
Filesystems like ext4 needs to start a new transaction in
the writepages for block allocation. This happens with delayed
allocation and there is limit to how many credits we can request
from the journal layer. So we call write_cache_pages multiple
times with wbc->nr_to_write set to the maximum possible value
limitted by the max journal credits available.

Add a new mode to writeback that enables us to handle this
behaviour. In the new mode we update the wbc->range_start
to point to the new offset to be written. Next call to
call to write_cache_pages will start writeout from specified
range_start offset. In the new mode we also limit writing
to the specified wbc->range_end.

Signed-off-by: Aneesh Kumar K.V <aneesh.kumar@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Mingming Cao <cmm@us.ibm.com>
Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
2008-07-11 19:27:31 -04:00
Steven Rostedt
3eefae994d ftrace: limit trace entries
Currently there is no protection from the root user to use up all of
memory for trace buffers. If the root user allocates too many entries,
the OOM killer might start kill off all tasks.

This patch adds an algorith to check the following condition:

 pages_requested > (freeable_memory + current_trace_buffer_pages) / 4

If the above is met then the allocation fails. The above prevents more
than 1/4th of freeable memory from being used by trace buffers.

To determine the freeable_memory, I made determine_dirtyable_memory in
mm/page-writeback.c global.

Special thanks goes to Peter Zijlstra for suggesting the above calculation.

Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
2008-05-23 22:05:14 +02:00
Miklos Szeredi
fc3ba692a4 mm: Add NR_WRITEBACK_TEMP counter
Fuse will use temporary buffers to write back dirty data from memory mappings
(normal writes are done synchronously).  This is needed, because there cannot
be any guarantee about the time in which a write will complete.

By using temporary buffers, from the MM's point if view the page is written
back immediately.  If the writeout was due to memory pressure, this
effectively migrates data from a full zone to a less full zone.

This patch adds a new counter (NR_WRITEBACK_TEMP) for the number of pages used
as temporary buffers.

[Lee.Schermerhorn@hp.com: add vmstat_text for NR_WRITEBACK_TEMP]
Signed-off-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@suse.cz>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-04-30 08:29:50 -07:00
Miklos Szeredi
dd5656e59c mm: bdi: export bdi_writeout_inc()
Fuse needs this for writable mmap support.

Signed-off-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@suse.cz>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-04-30 08:29:50 -07:00
Miklos Szeredi
e4ad08fe64 mm: bdi: add separate writeback accounting capability
Add a new BDI capability flag: BDI_CAP_NO_ACCT_WB.  If this flag is
set, then don't update the per-bdi writeback stats from
test_set_page_writeback() and test_clear_page_writeback().

Misc cleanups:

 - convert bdi_cap_writeback_dirty() and friends to static inline functions
 - create a flag that includes all three dirty/writeback related flags,
   since almst all users will want to have them toghether

Signed-off-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@suse.cz>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-04-30 08:29:50 -07:00
Peter Zijlstra
a42dde0415 mm: bdi: allow setting a maximum for the bdi dirty limit
Add "max_ratio" to /sys/class/bdi.  This indicates the maximum percentage of
the global dirty threshold allocated to this bdi.

[mszeredi@suse.cz]

 - fix parsing in max_ratio_store().
 - export bdi_set_max_ratio() to modules
 - limit bdi_dirty with bdi->max_ratio
 - document new sysfs attribute

Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Signed-off-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-04-30 08:29:50 -07:00
Peter Zijlstra
189d3c4a94 mm: bdi: allow setting a minimum for the bdi dirty limit
Under normal circumstances each device is given a part of the total write-back
cache that relates to its current avg writeout speed in relation to the other
devices.

min_ratio - allows one to assign a minimum portion of the write-back cache to
a particular device.  This is useful in situations where you might want to
provide a minimum QoS.  (One request for this feature came from flash based
storage people who wanted to avoid writing out at all costs - they of course
needed some pdflush hacks as well)

max_ratio - allows one to assign a maximum portion of the dirty limit to a
particular device.  This is useful in situations where you want to avoid one
device taking all or most of the write-back cache.  Eg.  an NFS mount that is
prone to get stuck, or a FUSE mount which you don't trust to play fair.

Add "min_ratio" to /sys/class/bdi.  This indicates the minimum percentage of
the global dirty threshold allocated to this bdi.

[mszeredi@suse.cz]

 - fix parsing in min_ratio_store()
 - document new sysfs attribute

Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Signed-off-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-04-30 08:29:50 -07:00
Peter Zijlstra
cf0ca9fe5d mm: bdi: export BDI attributes in sysfs
Provide a place in sysfs (/sys/class/bdi) for the backing_dev_info object.
This allows us to see and set the various BDI specific variables.

In particular this properly exposes the read-ahead window for all relevant
users and /sys/block/<block>/queue/read_ahead_kb should be deprecated.

With patient help from Kay Sievers and Greg KH

[mszeredi@suse.cz]

 - split off NFS and FUSE changes into separate patches
 - document new sysfs attributes under Documentation/ABI
 - do bdi_class_init as a core_initcall, otherwise the "default" BDI
   won't be initialized
 - remove bdi_init_fmt macro, it's not used very much

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix ia64 warning]
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Cc: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@vrfy.org>
Acked-by: Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>
Cc: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no>
Signed-off-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-04-30 08:29:49 -07:00
Fengguang Wu
8bc3be2751 writeback: speed up writeback of big dirty files
After making dirty a 100M file, the normal behavior is to start the
writeback for all data after 30s delays.  But sometimes the following
happens instead:

	- after 30s:    ~4M
	- after 5s:     ~4M
	- after 5s:     all remaining 92M

Some analyze shows that the internal io dispatch queues goes like this:

		s_io            s_more_io
		-------------------------
	1)	100M,1K         0
	2)	1K              96M
	3)	0               96M
1) initial state with a 100M file and a 1K file

2) 4M written, nr_to_write <= 0, so write more

3) 1K written, nr_to_write > 0, no more writes(BUG)

nr_to_write > 0 in (3) fools the upper layer to think that data have all
been written out.  The big dirty file is actually still sitting in
s_more_io.  We cannot simply splice s_more_io back to s_io as soon as s_io
becomes empty, and let the loop in generic_sync_sb_inodes() continue: this
may starve newly expired inodes in s_dirty.  It is also not an option to
draw inodes from both s_more_io and s_dirty, an let the loop go on: this
might lead to live locks, and might also starve other superblocks in sync
time(well kupdate may still starve some superblocks, that's another bug).

We have to return when a full scan of s_io completes.  So nr_to_write > 0
does not necessarily mean that "all data are written".  This patch
introduces a flag writeback_control.more_io to indicate that more io should
be done.  With it the big dirty file no longer has to wait for the next
kupdate invokation 5s later.

In sync_sb_inodes() we only set more_io on super_blocks we actually
visited.  This avoids the interaction between two pdflush deamons.

Also in __sync_single_inode() we don't blindly keep requeuing the io if the
filesystem cannot progress.  Failing to do so may lead to 100% iowait.

Tested-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Fengguang Wu <wfg@mail.ustc.edu.cn>
Cc: Michael Rubin <mrubin@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-02-05 09:44:19 -08:00