Re: [PATCH/RFC] VFS: Improve fairness when locking the per-superblock s_anon list

From: J. Bruce Fields
Date: Tue Feb 02 2016 - 09:33:04 EST


On Tue, Feb 02, 2016 at 03:10:43PM +1100, NeilBrown wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 02 2016, J. Bruce Fields wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 11:17:43AM +1100, NeilBrown wrote:
> >> bit-spin-locks, as used for dcache hash chains, are not fair.
> >> This is not a problem for the dcache hash table as different CPUs are
> >> likely to access different entries in the hash table so high contention
> >> is not expected.
> >> However anonymous dentryies (created by NFSD) all live on a single hash
> >> chain "s_anon" and the bitlock on this can be highly contended, resulting
> >> in soft-lockup warnings.
> >
> > Just out of curiosity, because I can't recall seeing complaints about
> > warnings, when do you see it happen? Server reboot, maybe?
>
> Soft-lockup warnings. Possibly some client might notice delays longer
> than they should be, but the only actual complaints have been about the warnings.

Yeah, I was curious about the cause, not the effect. Server reboot
seems like one of those cases where you might suddenly have to do a lot
of uncached lookups-by-filehandle.

> >
> > It should be hitting that __d_obtain_alias() case only when a filehandle
> > lookup finds a file without a cached dentry, which is an important case
> > to handle, but not normally what I'd expect to be the common case. Am I
> > forgetting something?
>
> I don't think you are missing anything significant. I too was somewhat
> surprised that there would be enough contention to cause problems, but
> the evidence was fairly conclusive (at two separate sites), and the
> proposed fix made the symptoms disappear.
>
> Maybe there are a great many different files being accessed and a lot of
> memory pressure on the server keeps pushing them out of cache. I find
> that customers often have loads that have quite different from what I
> might expect...

Sure. Thanks for looking at this. (Feel free to add a "Reviewed-by",
FWIW, though in my case that's only "agree that it fixes a real
problem". I've no informed opinion on the correct solution....).

--b.

>
> Thanks,
> NeilBrown
>
>
> >
> > --b.
> >
> >>
> >> So introduce a global (fair) spinlock and take it before grabing the
> >> bitlock on s_anon. This provides fairness and makes the warnings go away.
> >>
> >> We could alternately use s_inode_list_lock, or add another spinlock
> >> to struct super_block. Suggestions?
> >>
> >> Signed-off-by: NeilBrown <neilb@xxxxxxxx>
> >> ---
> >>
> >> Dave: I'd guess you would be against using the new s_inode_list_lock
> >> for this because it is already highly contended - yes?
> >> Is it worth adding another spinlock to 'struct super_block' ?
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> NeilBrown
> >>
> >>
> >> fs/dcache.c | 8 ++++++++
> >> 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)
> >>
> >> diff --git a/fs/dcache.c b/fs/dcache.c
> >> index 92d5140de851..e83f1ac1540c 100644
> >> --- a/fs/dcache.c
> >> +++ b/fs/dcache.c
> >> @@ -104,6 +104,8 @@ static unsigned int d_hash_shift __read_mostly;
> >>
> >> static struct hlist_bl_head *dentry_hashtable __read_mostly;
> >>
> >> +static DEFINE_SPINLOCK(s_anon_lock);
> >> +
> >> static inline struct hlist_bl_head *d_hash(const struct dentry *parent,
> >> unsigned int hash)
> >> {
> >> @@ -490,10 +492,14 @@ void __d_drop(struct dentry *dentry)
> >> else
> >> b = d_hash(dentry->d_parent, dentry->d_name.hash);
> >>
> >> + if (b == &dentry->d_sb->s_anon)
> >> + spin_lock(&s_anon_lock);
> >> hlist_bl_lock(b);
> >> __hlist_bl_del(&dentry->d_hash);
> >> dentry->d_hash.pprev = NULL;
> >> hlist_bl_unlock(b);
> >> + if (b == &dentry->d_sb->s_anon)
> >> + spin_unlock(&s_anon_lock);
> >> dentry_rcuwalk_invalidate(dentry);
> >> }
> >> }
> >> @@ -1978,9 +1984,11 @@ static struct dentry *__d_obtain_alias(struct inode *inode, int disconnected)
> >> spin_lock(&tmp->d_lock);
> >> __d_set_inode_and_type(tmp, inode, add_flags);
> >> hlist_add_head(&tmp->d_u.d_alias, &inode->i_dentry);
> >> + spin_lock(&s_anon_lock);
> >> hlist_bl_lock(&tmp->d_sb->s_anon);
> >> hlist_bl_add_head(&tmp->d_hash, &tmp->d_sb->s_anon);
> >> hlist_bl_unlock(&tmp->d_sb->s_anon);
> >> + spin_unlock(&s_anon_lock);
> >> spin_unlock(&tmp->d_lock);
> >> spin_unlock(&inode->i_lock);
> >> security_d_instantiate(tmp, inode);
> >> --
> >> 2.7.0
> >>