On Mon, 6 Sep 2010 11:47:33 +0100 Mel Gorman <mel@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > There are a number of cases where pages get cleaned but two of concern > to this patch are; > o When dirtying pages, processes may be throttled to clean pages if > dirty_ratio is not met. > o Pages belonging to inodes dirtied longer than > dirty_writeback_centisecs get cleaned. > > The problem for reclaim is that dirty pages can reach the end of the LRU if > pages are being dirtied slowly so that neither the throttling or a flusher > thread waking periodically cleans them. > > Background flush is already cleaning old or expired inodes first but the > expire time is too far in the future at the time of page reclaim. To mitigate > future problems, this patch wakes flusher threads to clean 4M of data - > an amount that should be manageable without causing congestion in many cases. > > Ideally, the background flushers would only be cleaning pages belonging > to the zone being scanned but it's not clear if this would be of benefit > (less IO) or not (potentially less efficient IO if an inode is scattered > across multiple zones). > > Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@xxxxxxxxx> > --- > mm/vmscan.c | 32 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-- > 1 files changed, 30 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) > > diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c > index 408c101..33d27a4 100644 > --- a/mm/vmscan.c > +++ b/mm/vmscan.c > @@ -148,6 +148,18 @@ static DECLARE_RWSEM(shrinker_rwsem); > /* Direct lumpy reclaim waits up to five seconds for background cleaning */ > #define MAX_SWAP_CLEAN_WAIT 50 > > +/* > + * When reclaim encounters dirty data, wakeup flusher threads to clean > + * a maximum of 4M of data. > + */ > +#define MAX_WRITEBACK (4194304UL >> PAGE_SHIFT) > +#define WRITEBACK_FACTOR (MAX_WRITEBACK / SWAP_CLUSTER_MAX) > +static inline long nr_writeback_pages(unsigned long nr_dirty) > +{ > + return laptop_mode ? 0 : > + min(MAX_WRITEBACK, (nr_dirty * WRITEBACK_FACTOR)); > +} > + > static struct zone_reclaim_stat *get_reclaim_stat(struct zone *zone, > struct scan_control *sc) > { > @@ -686,12 +698,14 @@ static noinline_for_stack void free_page_list(struct list_head *free_pages) > */ > static unsigned long shrink_page_list(struct list_head *page_list, > struct scan_control *sc, > + int file, > unsigned long *nr_still_dirty) > { > LIST_HEAD(ret_pages); > LIST_HEAD(free_pages); > int pgactivate = 0; > unsigned long nr_dirty = 0; > + unsigned long nr_dirty_seen = 0; > unsigned long nr_reclaimed = 0; > > cond_resched(); > @@ -790,6 +804,8 @@ static unsigned long shrink_page_list(struct list_head *page_list, > } > > if (PageDirty(page)) { > + nr_dirty_seen++; > + > /* > * Only kswapd can writeback filesystem pages to > * avoid risk of stack overflow > @@ -923,6 +939,18 @@ keep_lumpy: > > list_splice(&ret_pages, page_list); > > + /* > + * If reclaim is encountering dirty pages, it may be because > + * dirty pages are reaching the end of the LRU even though the > + * dirty_ratio may be satisified. In this case, wake flusher > + * threads to pro-actively clean up to a maximum of > + * 4 * SWAP_CLUSTER_MAX amount of data (usually 1/2MB) unless > + * !may_writepage indicates that this is a direct reclaimer in > + * laptop mode avoiding disk spin-ups > + */ > + if (file && nr_dirty_seen && sc->may_writepage) > + wakeup_flusher_threads(nr_writeback_pages(nr_dirty)); > + Thank you. Ok, I'll check what happens in memcg. Can I add if (sc->memcg) { memcg_check_flusher_wakeup() } or some here ? Hm, maybe memcg should wake up flusher at starting try_to_free_memory_cgroup_pages(). Thanks, -Kame -- 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>