On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 02:02:10PM +1000, Dave Chinner wrote: > On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 12:04:45PM +1000, Nick Piggin wrote: > > On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 09:01:29AM +1000, Dave Chinner wrote: > > > On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 02:17:33AM +1000, Nick Piggin wrote: > > > > On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 06:53:04PM +1000, Dave Chinner wrote: > > > > > From: Dave Chinner <dchinner@xxxxxxxxxx> > > > > > > > > > > The inode unused list is currently a global LRU. This does not match > > > > > the other global filesystem cache - the dentry cache - which uses > > > > > per-superblock LRU lists. Hence we have related filesystem object > > > > > types using different LRU reclaimatin schemes. > > > > > > > > Is this an improvement I wonder? The dcache is using per sb lists > > > > because it specifically requires sb traversal. > > > > > > Right - I originally implemented the per-sb dentry lists for > > > scalability purposes. i.e. to avoid monopolising the dentry_lock > > > during unmount looking for dentries on a specific sb and hanging the > > > system for several minutes. > > > > > > However, the reason for doing this to the inode cache is not for > > > scalability, it's because we have a tight relationship between the > > > dentry and inode cacheѕ. That is, reclaim from the dentry LRU grows > > > the inode LRU. Like the registration of the shrinkers, this is kind > > > of an implicit, undocumented behavour of the current shrinker > > > implemenation. > > > > Right, that's why I wonder whether it is an improvement. It would > > be interesting to see some tests (showing at least parity). > > I've done some testing showing parity. They've been along the lines > of: > - populate cache with 1m dentries + inodes > - run 'time echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches' > > I've used different methods of populating the caches to have them > non-sequential in the LRU (i.e. trigger fragmentation), have dirty > backing inodes (e.g. the VFS inode clean, the xfs inode dirty > because transactions haven't completed), etc. > > The variation on the test is around +-10%, with the per-sb shrinkers > averaging about 5% lower time to reclaim. This is within the error > margin of the test, so it's not really a conclusive win, but it is > certainly shows that it does not slow anything down. If you've got a > better way to test it, then I'm all ears.... I guess the problem is that inode LRU cache isn't very useful as long as there are dentries in the way (which is most of the time, isn't it?). I think nfsd will exercise them better? Dont know of any other cases. > > Right, it just makes it harder to do. By much harder, I did mostly mean > > the extra memory overhead. > > You've still got to allocate that extra memory on the per-sb dentry > LRUs so it's not really a valid argument. Well it would be per-zone, per-sb list, but I don't think that makes it an ivalid point. > IOWs, if it's too much > memory for per-sb inode LRUs, then it's too much memory for the > per-sb dentry LRUs as well... Not about how much is too much, it's about more cost or memory usage for what benefit? I guess it isn't a lot more memory though. > > If there is *no* benefit from doing per-sb > > icache then I would question whether we should. > > The same vague questions wondering about the benefit of per-sb > dentry LRUs were raised when I first proposed them years ago, and > look where we are now. To be fair that is because there were specific needs to do per-sb pruning. This isn't the case with icache. > Besides, focussing on whether this one patch > is a benefit or not is really missing the point because it's the > benefits of this patchset as a whole that need to be considered.... I would indeed like to focus on the benefits of the patchset as a whole. Leaving aside the xfs changes, it would be interesting to have at least a few numbers for dcache/icache heavy workloads. -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxx For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>