Re: [PATCH 01/45] writeback: reduce calls to global_page_state inbalance_dirty_pages()
From: Wu Fengguang
Date: Tue Oct 13 2009 - 21:40:02 EST
On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 02:28:19AM +0800, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-10-13 at 20:12 +0200, Jan Kara wrote:
> > > for (;;) {
> > > nr_reclaimable = global_page_state(NR_FILE_DIRTY) +
> > > global_page_state(NR_UNSTABLE_NFS);
> > > nr_writeback = global_page_state(NR_WRITEBACK) +
> > > global_page_state(NR_WRITEBACK_TEMP);
> > >
> > > global_dirty_thresh(&background_thresh, &dirty_thresh);
> > >
> > > /*
> > > * Throttle it only when the background writeback cannot
> > > * catch-up. This avoids (excessively) small writeouts
> > > * when the bdi limits are ramping up.
> > > */
> > > if (nr_reclaimable + nr_writeback <
> > > (background_thresh + dirty_thresh) / 2)
> > > break;
> > >
> > > bdi_thresh = bdi_dirty_thresh(bdi, dirty_thresh);
> > >
> > > /*
> > > * In order to avoid the stacked BDI deadlock we need
> > > * to ensure we accurately count the 'dirty' pages when
> > > * the threshold is low.
> > > *
> > > * Otherwise it would be possible to get thresh+n pages
> > > * reported dirty, even though there are thresh-m pages
> > > * actually dirty; with m+n sitting in the percpu
> > > * deltas.
> > > */
> > > if (bdi_thresh < 2*bdi_stat_error(bdi)) {
> > > bdi_nr_reclaimable = bdi_stat_sum(bdi, BDI_RECLAIMABLE);
> > > bdi_nr_writeback = bdi_stat_sum(bdi, BDI_WRITEBACK);
> > > } else {
> > > bdi_nr_reclaimable = bdi_stat(bdi, BDI_RECLAIMABLE);
> > > bdi_nr_writeback = bdi_stat(bdi, BDI_WRITEBACK);
> > > }
> > >
> > > /*
> > > * The bdi thresh is somehow "soft" limit derived from the
> > > * global "hard" limit. The former helps to prevent heavy IO
> > > * bdi or process from holding back light ones; The latter is
> > > * the last resort safeguard.
> > > */
> > > dirty_exceeded =
> > > (bdi_nr_reclaimable + bdi_nr_writeback >= bdi_thresh)
> > > || (nr_reclaimable + nr_writeback >= dirty_thresh);
> > >
> > > if (!dirty_exceeded)
> > > break;
> > >
> > > bdi->dirty_exceed_time = jiffies;
> > >
> > > bdi_writeback_wait(bdi, write_chunk);
> > Hmm, probably you've discussed this in some other email but why do we
> > cycle in this loop until we get below dirty limit? We used to leave the
> > loop after writing write_chunk... So the time we spend in
> > balance_dirty_pages() is no longer limited, right?
Right, this is a legitimate concern.
> Wu was saying that without the loop nr_writeback wasn't limited, but
> since bdi_writeback_wakeup() is driven from writeout completion, I'm not
> sure how again that was so.
Let me summarize the ideas :)
There are two cases:
- there are no bdi or block io queue to limit nr_writeback
This must be fixed. It either let nr_writeback grow to dirty_thresh
(with loop) and thus squeeze nr_dirty, or grow out of control
totally (without loop). Current state is, the nr_writeback wait
queue for NFS is there; the one for btrfs is still missing.
- there is a nr_writeback limit, but is larger than dirty_thresh
In this case nr_dirty will be close to 0 regardless of the loop.
The loop will help to keep
nr_dirty + nr_writeback + nr_unstable < dirty_thresh
Without the loop, the "real" dirty threshold would be larger
(determined by the nr_writeback limit).
> We can move all of bdi_dirty to bdi_writeout, if the bdi writeout queue
> permits, but it cannot grow beyond the total limit, since we're actually
> waiting for writeout completion.
Yes, this explains the second case. It's some trade-off like: the
nr_writeback limit can not be trusted in small memory systems, so do
the loop to impose the dirty_thresh, which unfortunately can hurt
responsiveness on all systems with prolonged wait time..
We could possibly test (nr_dirty < nr_writeback). If so, the
nr_writeback limit could be too large to deserve the loop.
It still don't address the nr_dirty=0 problem for small memory system,
that should be acceptable since its nr_dirty will be small anyway.
> Possibly unstable is peculiar.
unstable can also go wild. I saw (in current linux-next with the
following patch) balance_dirty_pages() sleeping for >30s waiting for
the NFS nr_unstable to drop. That is, waiting for the dirty inode to
be _expired_ and written to disk on the server.
It's a general uncoordinated double caching problem for NFS (and maybe more).
Thanks,
Fengguang
---
[ 45.614799] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 228ms
[ 45.954821] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 324ms
[ 46.294874] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 324ms
[ 46.638810] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 328ms
[ 46.670769] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 28ms
[ 46.802779] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 128ms
[ 46.934788] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 124ms
[ 47.066778] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 124ms
[ 47.198774] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 128ms
[ 47.330763] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 124ms
[ 47.462768] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 128ms
[ 47.594768] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 124ms
[ 47.662763] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 60ms
[ 47.798781] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 132ms
[ 47.871435] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 64ms
[ 48.002749] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 124ms
[ 48.138787] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 132ms
[ 48.270824] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 124ms
[ 48.410762] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 128ms
[ 48.542758] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 128ms
[ 48.678786] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 132ms
[ 48.810781] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 124ms
[ 48.946755] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 124ms
[ 49.182753] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 228ms
[ 49.318773] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 128ms
[ 49.666784] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 324ms
[ 49.914774] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 228ms
[ 79.998354] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 30068ms
[ 80.062346] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 60ms
[ 80.290414] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 224ms
[ 80.542413] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 228ms
[ 80.782384] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 228ms
[ 81.142379] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 336ms
[ 116.005926] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 34852ms
[ 141.049584] balance_dirty_pages sleeped 25040ms
Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@xxxxxxxxx>
---
mm/page-writeback.c | 7 ++++++-
1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
--- linux.orig/mm/page-writeback.c 2009-10-09 10:22:58.000000000 +0800
+++ linux/mm/page-writeback.c 2009-10-09 10:31:53.000000000 +0800
@@ -490,6 +490,7 @@ static void balance_dirty_pages(struct a
unsigned long bdi_thresh;
unsigned long pages_written = 0;
unsigned long pause = 1;
+ unsigned long start = jiffies;
struct backing_dev_info *bdi = mapping->backing_dev_info;
@@ -566,7 +567,8 @@ static void balance_dirty_pages(struct a
if (pages_written >= write_chunk)
break; /* We've done our duty */
- schedule_timeout_interruptible(pause);
+ __set_current_state(TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE);
+ io_schedule_timeout(pause);
/*
* Increase the delay for each loop, up to our previous
@@ -577,6 +579,9 @@ static void balance_dirty_pages(struct a
pause = HZ / 10;
}
+ if (pause > 1)
+ printk("balance_dirty_pages sleeped %lums\n", (jiffies - start) * 1000/HZ);
+
if (bdi_nr_reclaimable + bdi_nr_writeback < bdi_thresh &&
bdi->dirty_exceeded)
bdi->dirty_exceeded = 0;
--
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