Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx> writes: >> OK, looking back at the blktrace data I collected, we see[1]: >> >> Total (cciss_c0d1): 2.6.29 2.6.30-rc7 >> ------------------------------------------------------------------- >> Writes Queued: 8,531K, 34,126MiB | 8,526K, 34,104MiB >> Write Dispatches: 556,256, 34,126MiB | 294,809, 34,105MiB <=== >> Writes Requeued: 0 | 0 >> Writes Completed: 556,256, 34,126MiB | 294,809, 34,105MiB >> Write Merges: 7,975K, 31,901MiB | 8,231K, 32,924MiB >> -------------------------------------------------------------------- >> IO unplugs: 1,253,337 | 7,346,184 <=== >> Timer unplugs: 1,462 | 3 >> >> Hmmm... > Yeah, this looks promissing. Although what I don't get is, how come that > number of writes dispatched is roughly twice as much for 2.6.29 but the > number of unplugs is higher on 2.6.30. My naive assumption would be that > higher unplug rate -> less merging -> more requests dispatched. Yeah, that's confusing! I don't have an answer for you yet! >> commit b029195dda0129b427c6e579a3bb3ae752da3a93 >> Author: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@xxxxxxxxxx> >> Date: Tue Apr 7 11:38:31 2009 +0200 >> >> cfq-iosched: don't let idling interfere with plugging >> >> When CFQ is waiting for a new request from a process, currently it'll >> immediately restart queuing when it sees such a request. This doesn't >> work very well with streamed IO, since we then end up splitting IO >> that would otherwise have been merged nicely. For a simple dd test, >> this causes 10x as many requests to be issued as we should have. >> Normally this goes unnoticed due to the low overhead of requests >> at the device side, but some hardware is very sensitive to request >> sizes and there it can cause big slow downs. >> >> Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@xxxxxxxxxx> >> >> There were a couple of subsequent fixups to this commit: >> >> commit d6ceb25e8d8bccf826848c2621a50d02c0a7f4ae >> Author: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@xxxxxxxxxx> >> Date: Tue Apr 14 14:18:16 2009 +0200 >> >> cfq-iosched: don't delay queue kick for a merged request >> >> commit 2d870722965211de072bb36b446a4df99dae07e1 >> Author: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@xxxxxxxxxx> >> Date: Wed Apr 15 12:12:46 2009 +0200 >> >> cfq-iosched: tweak kick logic a bit more >> >> >> So I guess that's where we need to start looking. > OK, I can try to check whether backing out just these changes will help > anything. Well, that will help identify if they are, in fact, the cause. I hope it's not too hard to disentangle them from the current kernel! Thanks for all of your work on this! Cheers, Jeff -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ext4" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
