From 8bc3be2751b4f74ab90a446da1912fd8204d53f7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Fengguang Wu Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 22:29:36 -0800 Subject: writeback: speed up writeback of big dirty files After making dirty a 100M file, the normal behavior is to start the writeback for all data after 30s delays. But sometimes the following happens instead: - after 30s: ~4M - after 5s: ~4M - after 5s: all remaining 92M Some analyze shows that the internal io dispatch queues goes like this: s_io s_more_io ------------------------- 1) 100M,1K 0 2) 1K 96M 3) 0 96M 1) initial state with a 100M file and a 1K file 2) 4M written, nr_to_write <= 0, so write more 3) 1K written, nr_to_write > 0, no more writes(BUG) nr_to_write > 0 in (3) fools the upper layer to think that data have all been written out. The big dirty file is actually still sitting in s_more_io. We cannot simply splice s_more_io back to s_io as soon as s_io becomes empty, and let the loop in generic_sync_sb_inodes() continue: this may starve newly expired inodes in s_dirty. It is also not an option to draw inodes from both s_more_io and s_dirty, an let the loop go on: this might lead to live locks, and might also starve other superblocks in sync time(well kupdate may still starve some superblocks, that's another bug). We have to return when a full scan of s_io completes. So nr_to_write > 0 does not necessarily mean that "all data are written". This patch introduces a flag writeback_control.more_io to indicate that more io should be done. With it the big dirty file no longer has to wait for the next kupdate invokation 5s later. In sync_sb_inodes() we only set more_io on super_blocks we actually visited. This avoids the interaction between two pdflush deamons. Also in __sync_single_inode() we don't blindly keep requeuing the io if the filesystem cannot progress. Failing to do so may lead to 100% iowait. Tested-by: Mike Snitzer Signed-off-by: Fengguang Wu Cc: Michael Rubin Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds --- fs/fs-writeback.c | 18 ++++++++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 16 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) (limited to 'fs/fs-writeback.c') diff --git a/fs/fs-writeback.c b/fs/fs-writeback.c index 3fe782d70a7..0b3064079fa 100644 --- a/fs/fs-writeback.c +++ b/fs/fs-writeback.c @@ -284,7 +284,17 @@ __sync_single_inode(struct inode *inode, struct writeback_control *wbc) * soon as the queue becomes uncongested. */ inode->i_state |= I_DIRTY_PAGES; - requeue_io(inode); + if (wbc->nr_to_write <= 0) { + /* + * slice used up: queue for next turn + */ + requeue_io(inode); + } else { + /* + * somehow blocked: retry later + */ + redirty_tail(inode); + } } else { /* * Otherwise fully redirty the inode so that @@ -468,8 +478,12 @@ sync_sb_inodes(struct super_block *sb, struct writeback_control *wbc) iput(inode); cond_resched(); spin_lock(&inode_lock); - if (wbc->nr_to_write <= 0) + if (wbc->nr_to_write <= 0) { + wbc->more_io = 1; break; + } + if (!list_empty(&sb->s_more_io)) + wbc->more_io = 1; } return; /* Leave any unwritten inodes on s_io */ } -- cgit v1.2.3