The dirty_ratio was siliently limited in global_dirty_limits() to >= 5%. This is not a user expected behavior. And it's inconsistent with calc_period_shift(), which uses the plain vm_dirty_ratio value. Let's rip the internal bound. At the same time, fix balance_dirty_pages() to work with the dirty_thresh=0 case. This allows applications to proceed when dirty+writeback pages are all cleaned. And ">" fits with the name "exceeded" better than ">=" does. Neil think it is an aesthetic improvement as well as a functional one :) CC: Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx> CC: Rik van Riel <riel@xxxxxxxxxx> CC: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@xxxxxxxxx> Proposed-by: Con Kolivas <kernel@xxxxxxxxxxx> Reviewed-by: Neil Brown <neilb@xxxxxxx> Reviewed-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@xxxxxxxxx> --- mm/page-writeback.c | 14 ++++---------- 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-) --- linux-next.orig/mm/page-writeback.c 2010-08-26 08:37:31.000000000 +0800 +++ linux-next/mm/page-writeback.c 2010-08-26 08:37:55.000000000 +0800 @@ -415,14 +415,8 @@ void global_dirty_limits(unsigned long * if (vm_dirty_bytes) dirty = DIV_ROUND_UP(vm_dirty_bytes, PAGE_SIZE); - else { - int dirty_ratio; - - dirty_ratio = vm_dirty_ratio; - if (dirty_ratio < 5) - dirty_ratio = 5; - dirty = (dirty_ratio * available_memory) / 100; - } + else + dirty = (vm_dirty_ratio * available_memory) / 100; if (dirty_background_bytes) background = DIV_ROUND_UP(dirty_background_bytes, PAGE_SIZE); @@ -542,8 +536,8 @@ static void balance_dirty_pages(struct a * the last resort safeguard. */ dirty_exceeded = - (bdi_nr_reclaimable + bdi_nr_writeback >= bdi_thresh) - || (nr_reclaimable + nr_writeback >= dirty_thresh); + (bdi_nr_reclaimable + bdi_nr_writeback > bdi_thresh) + || (nr_reclaimable + nr_writeback > dirty_thresh); if (!dirty_exceeded) break; -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html