On the last conference call I mentioned that I had recently been running into memory leaks with data=journal. I've traced it down to {collapse,insert,zero}_range calls. It bisected down to 1ce01c4a199: "ext4: fix COLLAPSE_RANGE test failure in data journalling mode", and specifically, this bit of code the collapse/insert/zero range functions: /* Call ext4_force_commit to flush all data in case of data=journal. */ if (ext4_should_journal_data(inode)) { ret = ext4_force_commit(inode->i_sb); if (ret) return ret; } This is needed to prevent data from being lost with the insert and collapse range calls. (It is not obvious to me whether this bit of code, and the filemap_write_and_wait_range() call, is needed for zero_range, but I haven't had a chance to investigate this more deeply.) Further investigation shows that the problem seems to be a buffer_head leak. Running generic/091 with data=journal in a loop, and using the following between each test runs: #!/bin/sh # /tmp/hooks/logger echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches logger $(grep MemFree /proc/meminfo) logger $(grep buffer_head /proc/slabinfo) logger $(grep jbd2_journal_head /proc/slabinfo) what we find is: logger: MemFree: 7348684 kB logger: buffer_head 608 1600 128 32 1 : tunables 32 16 8 : slabdata 50 50 0 : globalstat 108003 36592 3294 0 0 1 0 0 0 : cpustat 102424 6803 101863 6760 logger: jbd2_journal_head 120 120 136 30 1 : tunables 32 16 8 : slabdata 4 4 0 : globalstat 203 120 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 : cpustat 179 14 84 0 logger: MemFree: 7155576 kB logger: buffer_head 45008 65920 128 32 1 : tunables 32 16 8 : slabdata 2060 2060 0 : globalstat 207971 79408 5753 0 0 1 0 0 0 : cpustat 354158 14482 311984 11664 logger: jbd2_journal_head 206 690 136 30 1 : tunables 32 16 8 : slabdata 23 23 128 : globalstat 38817 11086 1142 0 0 0 0 0 0 : cpustat 68275 3482 68402 3326 kernel: logger (5838): drop_caches: 3 logger: MemFree: 6967656 kB logger: buffer_head 89552 111616 128 32 1 : tunables 32 16 8 : slabdata 3488 3488 0 : globalstat 308435 124352 7589 0 0 1 0 0 0 : cpustat 606287 22193 522363 16591 logger: jbd2_journal_head 210 660 136 30 1 : tunables 32 16 8 : slabdata 22 22 128 : globalstat 77205 11086 2158 0 0 0 0 0 0 : cpustat 136335 6954 136593 6669 logger: MemFree: 6780176 kB logger: buffer_head 134080 155328 128 32 1 : tunables 32 16 8 : slabdata 4854 4854 0 : globalstat 408163 168144 9369 0 0 1 0 0 0 : cpustat 857710 29874 732032 21489 logger: jbd2_journal_head 210 570 136 30 1 : tunables 32 16 8 : slabdata 19 19 128 : globalstat 115685 11086 3198 0 0 0 0 0 0 : cpustat 204408 10417 204798 9998 The problem then appears to be with the buffer heads associated with pages that have been recently written in data=journal mode are not getting freed. I haven't had time to take this any further, but I wanted to document what I've found to date as a checkpoint. If someone has time to take this further, or has any additional insight, I'd certainly appreciate it! - Ted P.S. I will shortly be releasing an enhancement to kvm-xfstests and gce-xfstests which allows collapse/insert/zero range to be easily disabled, like this: gce-xfstests --hooks /tmp/hooks -C 20 -c data_journal --no-collapse --no-zero --no-insert generic/091 (The above traces were taken without --no-collapse --no-zero and --noinsert. With those options added, the memory leak goes away.) -- 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