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authorFengguang Wu <wfg@mail.ustc.edu.cn>2008-02-04 22:29:36 -0800
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@woody.linux-foundation.org>2008-02-05 09:44:19 -0800
commit8bc3be2751b4f74ab90a446da1912fd8204d53f7 (patch)
tree2bc514025a906203244d98de70fb6bd87f3ac9ac /Documentation
parenta322f8ab66f50b6c0dcdb59abae84fede7a5fded (diff)
downloadlinux-8bc3be2751b4f74ab90a446da1912fd8204d53f7.tar.bz2
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 <snitzer@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Fengguang Wu <wfg@mail.ustc.edu.cn> Cc: Michael Rubin <mrubin@google.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
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