[PATCH] writeback: Fix occasional slow sync(1)

[Jan Kara]

In case when system contains no dirty pages, wakeup_flusher_threads()
will submit WB_SYNC_NONE writeback for 0 pages so wb_writeback() exits
immediately without doing anything. Thus sync(1) will write all the
dirty inodes from a WB_SYNC_ALL writeback pass which is slow.

Fix the problem by using get_nr_dirty_pages() in
wakeup_flusher_threads() instead of calculating number of dirty pages
manually. That function also takes number of dirty inodes into account.

CC: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Reported-by: Paul Taysom <taysom@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx>
---
 fs/fs-writeback.c | 6 ++----
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/fs/fs-writeback.c b/fs/fs-writeback.c
index a85ac4e..d0d70a8 100644
--- a/fs/fs-writeback.c
+++ b/fs/fs-writeback.c
@@ -1055,10 +1055,8 @@ void wakeup_flusher_threads(long nr_pages, enum wb_reason reason)
 {
 	struct backing_dev_info *bdi;
 
-	if (!nr_pages) {
-		nr_pages = global_page_state(NR_FILE_DIRTY) +
-				global_page_state(NR_UNSTABLE_NFS);
-	}
+	if (!nr_pages)
+		nr_pages = get_nr_dirty_pages();
 
 	rcu_read_lock();
 	list_for_each_entry_rcu(bdi, &bdi_list, bdi_list) {
-- 
1.8.1.4


--GvXjxJ+pjyke8COw--
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