Re: [PATCH 0/1] [RESEND] ext4: fix lazy initialization next schedule time computation in more granular unit

[Shaoying Xu]

Here are more context and testing details:

This issue was originally identified in Amazon Linux 2 with kernel 5.10 and
CONFIG_HZ is 250 in x86_64 while 100 in arm64. It can be reproduced by launching
EC2 instances c5.2xlarge (x86_64) and c6g.2xlarge (arm64) then measuring time to
finish ext4lazyinit thread after mounting the ext4 FS.

w/o fix in kernel 5.10
|----------------+-------------+------------|
| ext4 FS volume | c6g.2xlarge | c5.2xlarge |
|----------------+-------------+------------|
| 2T             | 1842 secs   | 743 secs   |
|----------------+-------------+------------|
| 3T             | 2690 secs   | 1110 secs  |
|----------------+-------------+------------|

w/ fix in kernel 5.10
|----------------+-------------+------------|
| ext4 FS volume | c6g.2xlarge | c5.2xlarge |
|----------------+-------------+------------|
| 2T             | 660 secs    | 544 secs   |
|----------------+-------------+------------|
| 3T             | 1053 secs   | 932 secs   |
|----------------+-------------+------------|

On Thu, Sep 02, 2021 at 04:44:11PM +0000, Shaoying Xu wrote:
> Description
> ===========
> Ext4 FS has inappropriate implementations on the next schedule time calculation
> that use jiffies to measure the time for one request to zero out inode table. This
> actually makes the wait time effectively dependent on CONFIG_HZ, which is
> undesirable. We have observed on server systems with 100HZ some fairly long delays
> in initialization as a result. Therefore, we propose to use more granular unit to
> calculate the next schedule time.
> 
> Test
> ====
> Tested the patch in stable kernel 5.10 with FS volume 2T and 3T on EC2
> instances. Before the fix, instances with 250HZ finished the lazy initialization 
> in around 2.4x time less than instances with 100HZ. 
> After the fix, both of them finished within approximately same time. 
> 
> Patch
> =====
> Shaoying Xu (1):
>   ext4: fix lazy initialization next schedule time computation in more
>     granular unit
> 
>  fs/ext4/super.c | 9 ++++-----
>  1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
> 
> -- 
> 2.16.6
>