Re: [PATCH 14/17] writeback: make writeback_control.nr_to_writestraight

[Wu Fengguang]

On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 07:18:00AM +0800, Dave Chinner wrote:
> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 09:57:20PM +0800, Wu Fengguang wrote:
> > Pass struct wb_writeback_work all the way down to writeback_sb_inodes(),
> > and initialize the struct writeback_control there.
> > 
> > struct writeback_control is basically designed to control writeback of a
> > single file, but we keep abuse it for writing multiple files in
> > writeback_sb_inodes() and its callers.
> > 
> > It immediately clean things up, e.g. suddenly wbc.nr_to_write vs
> > work->nr_pages starts to make sense, and instead of saving and restoring
> > pages_skipped in writeback_sb_inodes it can always start with a clean
> > zero value.
> > 
> > It also makes a neat IO pattern change: large dirty files are now
> > written in the full 4MB writeback chunk size, rather than whatever
> > remained quota in wbc->nr_to_write.
> > 
> > Proposed-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@xxxxxxxxx>
> > ---
> .....
> > @@ -543,34 +588,44 @@ static int writeback_sb_inodes(struct su
> >  			requeue_io(inode, wb);
> >  			continue;
> >  		}
> > -
> >  		__iget(inode);
> > +		write_chunk = writeback_chunk_size(work);
> > +		wbc.nr_to_write = write_chunk;
> > +		wbc.pages_skipped = 0;
> > +
> > +		writeback_single_inode(inode, wb, &wbc);
> >  
> > -		pages_skipped = wbc->pages_skipped;
> > -		writeback_single_inode(inode, wb, wbc);
> > -		if (wbc->pages_skipped != pages_skipped) {
> > +		work->nr_pages -= write_chunk - wbc.nr_to_write;
> > +		wrote += write_chunk - wbc.nr_to_write;
> > +		if (wbc.pages_skipped) {
> >  			/*
> >  			 * writeback is not making progress due to locked
> >  			 * buffers.  Skip this inode for now.
> >  			 */
> >  			redirty_tail(inode, wb);
> > -		}
> > +		} else if (!(inode->i_state & I_DIRTY))
> > +			wrote++;
> 
> Oh, that's just ugly. Do that accounting via nr_to_write in
> writeback_single_inode() as I suggested earlier, please.

This is the more simple and reliable test "whether the inode is
cleaned" that does not rely on the return value of ->write_inode(),
as replied in the earlier email.

> >  		spin_unlock(&inode->i_lock);
> >  		spin_unlock(&wb->list_lock);
> >  		iput(inode);
> >  		cond_resched();
> >  		spin_lock(&wb->list_lock);
> > -		if (wbc->nr_to_write <= 0)
> > -			return 1;
> > +		/*
> > +		 * bail out to wb_writeback() often enough to check
> > +		 * background threshold and other termination conditions.
> > +		 */
> > +		if (wrote >= MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES)
> > +			break;
> 
> Why do this so often? If you are writing large files, it will be
> once every writeback_single_inode() call that you bail. Seems rather
> inefficient to me to go back to the top level loop just to check for
> more work when we already know we have more work to do because
> there's still inodes on b_io....

(answering the below comments together)

For large files, it's exactly the same behavior as in the old
wb_writeback(), which sets .nr_to_write = MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES.

So it's not "more inefficient" than the original code.

For balance_dirty_pages(), it may change behavior by splitting one
16MB write to four 4MB writes. However the good side could be less
throttle latency.

The fix is to do IO-less balance_dirty_pages() and do larger write
chunk size (around half write bandwidth). Then we get reasonable good
bail frequent as well as IO efficiency.

Thanks,
Fengguang

> > +		if (work->nr_pages <= 0)
> > +			break;
> >  	}
> > -	/* b_io is empty */
> > -	return 1;
> > +	return wrote;
> >  }
> >  
> > -static void __writeback_inodes_wb(struct bdi_writeback *wb,
> > -				  struct writeback_control *wbc)
> > +static long __writeback_inodes_wb(struct bdi_writeback *wb,
> > +				  struct wb_writeback_work *work)
> >  {
> > -	int ret = 0;
> > +	long wrote = 0;
> >  
> >  	while (!list_empty(&wb->b_io)) {
> >  		struct inode *inode = wb_inode(wb->b_io.prev);
> > @@ -580,33 +635,34 @@ static void __writeback_inodes_wb(struct
> >  			requeue_io(inode, wb);
> >  			continue;
> >  		}
> > -		ret = writeback_sb_inodes(sb, wb, wbc, false);
> > +		wrote += writeback_sb_inodes(sb, wb, work);
> >  		drop_super(sb);
> >  
> > -		if (ret)
> > +		if (wrote >= MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES)
> > +			break;
> > +		if (work->nr_pages <= 0)
> >  			break;
> 
> Same here.
> 
> >  	}
> >  	/* Leave any unwritten inodes on b_io */
> > +	return wrote;
> >  }
> >  
> > -void writeback_inodes_wb(struct bdi_writeback *wb,
> > -		struct writeback_control *wbc)
> > +long writeback_inodes_wb(struct bdi_writeback *wb, long nr_pages)
> >  {
> > +	struct wb_writeback_work work = {
> > +		.nr_pages	= nr_pages,
> > +		.sync_mode	= WB_SYNC_NONE,
> > +		.range_cyclic	= 1,
> > +	};
> > +
> >  	spin_lock(&wb->list_lock);
> >  	if (list_empty(&wb->b_io))
> > -		queue_io(wb, wbc->older_than_this);
> > -	__writeback_inodes_wb(wb, wbc);
> > +		queue_io(wb, NULL);
> > +	__writeback_inodes_wb(wb, &work);
> >  	spin_unlock(&wb->list_lock);
> > -}
> >  
> > -/*
> > - * The maximum number of pages to writeout in a single bdi flush/kupdate
> > - * operation.  We do this so we don't hold I_SYNC against an inode for
> > - * enormous amounts of time, which would block a userspace task which has
> > - * been forced to throttle against that inode.  Also, the code reevaluates
> > - * the dirty each time it has written this many pages.
> > - */
> > -#define MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES     1024
> > +	return nr_pages - work.nr_pages;
> > +}
> 
> And this change means we'll only ever write 1024 pages maximum per
> call to writeback_inodes_wb() when large files are present. that
> means:
> 
> ....
> > @@ -562,17 +555,17 @@ static void balance_dirty_pages(struct a
> >  		 * threshold otherwise wait until the disk writes catch
> >  		 * up.
> >  		 */
> > -		trace_wbc_balance_dirty_start(&wbc, bdi);
> > +		trace_balance_dirty_start(bdi);
> >  		if (bdi_nr_reclaimable > bdi_thresh) {
> > -			writeback_inodes_wb(&bdi->wb, &wbc);
> > -			pages_written += write_chunk - wbc.nr_to_write;
> > -			trace_wbc_balance_dirty_written(&wbc, bdi);
> > +			pages_written += writeback_inodes_wb(&bdi->wb,
> > +							     write_chunk);
> > +			trace_balance_dirty_written(bdi, pages_written);
> >  			if (pages_written >= write_chunk)
> >  				break;		/* We've done our duty */
> >  		}
> > -		trace_wbc_balance_dirty_wait(&wbc, bdi);
> >  		__set_current_state(TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE);
> >  		io_schedule_timeout(pause);
> > +		trace_balance_dirty_wait(bdi);
> 
> We're going to get different throttling behaviour dependent on
> whether there are large dirty files present or not in cache....
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Dave.
> -- 
> Dave Chinner
> david@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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