The wait_on_page_writeback() call inside pageout() is virtually dead code.
shrink_inactive_list()
shrink_page_list(PAGEOUT_IO_ASYNC)
pageout(PAGEOUT_IO_ASYNC)
shrink_page_list(PAGEOUT_IO_SYNC)
pageout(PAGEOUT_IO_SYNC)
Because shrink_page_list/pageout(PAGEOUT_IO_SYNC) is always called after
a preceding shrink_page_list/pageout(PAGEOUT_IO_ASYNC), the first
pageout(ASYNC) converts dirty pages into writeback pages, the second
shrink_page_list(SYNC) waits on the clean of writeback pages before
calling pageout(SYNC). The second shrink_page_list(SYNC) can hardly run
into dirty pages for pageout(SYNC) unless in some race conditions.
And the wait page-by-page behavior of pageout(SYNC) will lead to very
long stall time if running into some range of dirty pages. So it's bad
idea anyway to call wait_on_page_writeback() inside pageout().
CC: Andy Whitcroft <apw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@xxxxxxxxx>
---
mm/vmscan.c | 13 ++-----------
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)
--- linux-next.orig/mm/vmscan.c 2010-07-28 16:22:21.000000000 +0800
+++ linux-next/mm/vmscan.c 2010-07-28 16:23:35.000000000 +0800
@@ -324,8 +324,7 @@ typedef enum {
* pageout is called by shrink_page_list() for each dirty page.
* Calls ->writepage().
*/
-static pageout_t pageout(struct page *page, struct address_space *mapping,
- enum pageout_io sync_writeback)
+static pageout_t pageout(struct page *page, struct address_space *mapping)
{
/*
* If the page is dirty, only perform writeback if that write
@@ -384,14 +383,6 @@ static pageout_t pageout(struct page *pa
return PAGE_ACTIVATE;
}
- /*
- * Wait on writeback if requested to. This happens when
- * direct reclaiming a large contiguous area and the
- * first attempt to free a range of pages fails.
- */
- if (PageWriteback(page) && sync_writeback == PAGEOUT_IO_SYNC)
- wait_on_page_writeback(page);
-
if (!PageWriteback(page)) {
/* synchronous write or broken a_ops? */
ClearPageReclaim(page);
@@ -727,7 +718,7 @@ static unsigned long shrink_page_list(st
goto keep_locked;
/* Page is dirty, try to write it out here */
- switch (pageout(page, mapping, sync_writeback)) {
+ switch (pageout(page, mapping)) {
case PAGE_KEEP:
goto keep_locked;
case PAGE_ACTIVATE:
--
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