On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 03:02:47PM +0800, Dave Chinner wrote: > On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 11:00:05AM +0800, Wu Fengguang wrote: > > Dynamically compute the dirty expire timestamp at queue_io() time. > > > > writeback_control.older_than_this used to be determined at entrance to > > the kupdate writeback work. This _static_ timestamp may go stale if the > > kupdate work runs on and on. The flusher may then stuck with some old > > busy inodes, never considering newly expired inodes thereafter. > > > > This has two possible problems: > > > > - It is unfair for a large dirty inode to delay (for a long time) the > > writeback of small dirty inodes. > > > > - As time goes by, the large and busy dirty inode may contain only > > _freshly_ dirtied pages. Ignoring newly expired dirty inodes risks > > delaying the expired dirty pages to the end of LRU lists, triggering > > the evil pageout(). Nevertheless this patch merely addresses part > > of the problem. > > When wb_writeback() is called with for_kupdate set, it initialises > wbc->older_than_this appropriately outside the writeback loop. > queue_io() is called once per writeback_inodes_wb() call, which is > once per loop in wb_writeback. All your change does is re-initialise > older_than_this once per loop in wb_writeback, jus tin a different > and very non-obvious place. > > So why didn't you just re-initialise it inside the loop in > wb_writeback() and leave all the other code alone? It helps both readability and efficiency to make it a local var. I have another patch to kill the wbc->older_than_this (and one more for wbc->more_io). They are delayed to avoid possible merge conflicts with the IO-less patchset. But yeah, it seems reasonable to move the first chunk of the below patch to this one. Thanks, Fengguang --- Subject: writeback: the kupdate expire timestamp should be a moving target Date: Wed Jul 21 20:32:30 CST 2010 Remove writeback_control.older_than_this which is no longer used. [kitayama@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] fix btrfs and ext4 references Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx> Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mel@xxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Itaru Kitayama <kitayama@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@xxxxxxxxx> --- fs/btrfs/extent_io.c | 2 -- fs/fs-writeback.c | 13 ------------- include/linux/writeback.h | 2 -- include/trace/events/writeback.h | 6 +----- mm/backing-dev.c | 1 - 5 files changed, 1 insertion(+), 23 deletions(-) --- linux-next.orig/fs/fs-writeback.c 2011-04-18 08:37:01.000000000 +0800 +++ linux-next/fs/fs-writeback.c 2011-04-18 08:38:16.000000000 +0800 @@ -681,30 +681,20 @@ static unsigned long writeback_chunk_siz * Try to run once per dirty_writeback_interval. But if a writeback event * takes longer than a dirty_writeback_interval interval, then leave a * one-second gap. - * - * older_than_this takes precedence over nr_to_write. So we'll only write back - * all dirty pages if they are all attached to "old" mappings. */ static long wb_writeback(struct bdi_writeback *wb, struct wb_writeback_work *work) { struct writeback_control wbc = { .sync_mode = work->sync_mode, - .older_than_this = NULL, .for_kupdate = work->for_kupdate, .for_background = work->for_background, .range_cyclic = work->range_cyclic, }; - unsigned long oldest_jif; long wrote = 0; long write_chunk; struct inode *inode; - if (wbc.for_kupdate) { - wbc.older_than_this = &oldest_jif; - oldest_jif = jiffies - - msecs_to_jiffies(dirty_expire_interval * 10); - } if (!wbc.range_cyclic) { wbc.range_start = 0; wbc.range_end = LLONG_MAX; @@ -1139,9 +1129,6 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(__mark_inode_dirty); * Write out a superblock's list of dirty inodes. A wait will be performed * upon no inodes, all inodes or the final one, depending upon sync_mode. * - * If older_than_this is non-NULL, then only write out inodes which - * had their first dirtying at a time earlier than *older_than_this. - * * If `bdi' is non-zero then we're being asked to writeback a specific queue. * This function assumes that the blockdev superblock's inodes are backed by * a variety of queues, so all inodes are searched. For other superblocks, --- linux-next.orig/include/linux/writeback.h 2011-04-18 08:36:59.000000000 +0800 +++ linux-next/include/linux/writeback.h 2011-04-18 08:38:16.000000000 +0800 @@ -66,8 +66,6 @@ enum writeback_sync_modes { */ struct writeback_control { enum writeback_sync_modes sync_mode; - unsigned long *older_than_this; /* If !NULL, only write back inodes - older than this */ unsigned long wb_start; /* Time writeback_inodes_wb was called. This is needed to avoid extra jobs and livelock */ --- linux-next.orig/include/trace/events/writeback.h 2011-04-18 08:36:59.000000000 +0800 +++ linux-next/include/trace/events/writeback.h 2011-04-18 08:38:16.000000000 +0800 @@ -115,7 +115,6 @@ DECLARE_EVENT_CLASS(wbc_class, __field(int, for_reclaim) __field(int, range_cyclic) __field(int, more_io) - __field(unsigned long, older_than_this) __field(long, range_start) __field(long, range_end) ), @@ -130,14 +129,12 @@ DECLARE_EVENT_CLASS(wbc_class, __entry->for_reclaim = wbc->for_reclaim; __entry->range_cyclic = wbc->range_cyclic; __entry->more_io = wbc->more_io; - __entry->older_than_this = wbc->older_than_this ? - *wbc->older_than_this : 0; __entry->range_start = (long)wbc->range_start; __entry->range_end = (long)wbc->range_end; ), TP_printk("bdi %s: towrt=%ld skip=%ld mode=%d kupd=%d " - "bgrd=%d reclm=%d cyclic=%d more=%d older=0x%lx " + "bgrd=%d reclm=%d cyclic=%d more=%d " "start=0x%lx end=0x%lx", __entry->name, __entry->nr_to_write, @@ -148,7 +145,6 @@ DECLARE_EVENT_CLASS(wbc_class, __entry->for_reclaim, __entry->range_cyclic, __entry->more_io, - __entry->older_than_this, __entry->range_start, __entry->range_end) ) --- linux-next.orig/mm/backing-dev.c 2011-04-18 08:36:59.000000000 +0800 +++ linux-next/mm/backing-dev.c 2011-04-18 08:38:16.000000000 +0800 @@ -263,7 +263,6 @@ static void bdi_flush_io(struct backing_ { struct writeback_control wbc = { .sync_mode = WB_SYNC_NONE, - .older_than_this = NULL, .range_cyclic = 1, .nr_to_write = 1024, }; --- linux-next.orig/fs/btrfs/extent_io.c 2011-04-18 08:36:59.000000000 +0800 +++ linux-next/fs/btrfs/extent_io.c 2011-04-18 08:38:16.000000000 +0800 @@ -2556,7 +2556,6 @@ int extent_write_full_page(struct extent }; struct writeback_control wbc_writepages = { .sync_mode = wbc->sync_mode, - .older_than_this = NULL, .nr_to_write = 64, .range_start = page_offset(page) + PAGE_CACHE_SIZE, .range_end = (loff_t)-1, @@ -2589,7 +2588,6 @@ int extent_write_locked_range(struct ext }; struct writeback_control wbc_writepages = { .sync_mode = mode, - .older_than_this = NULL, .nr_to_write = nr_pages * 2, .range_start = start, .range_end = end + 1, -- 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/ . 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