Re: 21 million inodes is causing severe pauses.

From: Robin Holt
Date: Tue Nov 16 2004 - 15:06:13 EST


On Tue, Nov 16, 2004 at 11:13:21AM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> Robin Holt <holt@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > I guess I am very concerned at this point. If I can do a
> > release/reacquire, why not just change generic_shutdown_super() so the
> > lock_kernel() does not happen until the first pass has occurred. ie:
> >
> > --- super.c.orig 2004-11-16 10:22:17 -06:00
> > +++ super.c 2004-11-16 10:22:41 -06:00
> > @@ -232,10 +232,10 @@
> > dput(root);
> > fsync_super(sb);
> > lock_super(sb);
> > - lock_kernel();
> > sb->s_flags &= ~MS_ACTIVE;
> > /* bad name - it should be evict_inodes() */
> > invalidate_inodes(sb);
> > + lock_kernel();
> >
> > if (sop->write_super && sb->s_dirt)
> > sop->write_super(sb);
> >
> > This at least makes the lock_kernel time much smaller than it is right
> > now. It also does not affect any callers that may really need the BKL.
>
> lock_kernel() is also taken way up in do_umount(), hence the need for
> release_kernel_lock()/reacquire_kernel_lock().

It looks like it is only held very briefly during the early parts of do_umount.

I have moved lock_kernel() as above in addition to the two patches you pointed
to earlier. This has left me with a system which has 21M inodes and undetectable
delays during heavy mount/umount activity. I am starting one last test which
attempts a umount of a filesystem which has many inodes associated with it.

At this point, I have checked the entire code path and see no reason the
BKL is held for the first call to invalidate_inodes.
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