On Sat 04-04-20 08:40:17, Neil Brown wrote: > On Fri, Apr 03 2020, Michal Hocko wrote: > > > On Thu 02-04-20 10:53:20, Neil Brown wrote: > >> > >> PF_LESS_THROTTLE exists for loop-back nfsd, and a similar need in the > >> loop block driver, where a daemon needs to write to one bdi in > >> order to free up writes queued to another bdi. > >> > >> The daemon sets PF_LESS_THROTTLE and gets a larger allowance of dirty > >> pages, so that it can still dirty pages after other processses have been > >> throttled. > >> > >> This approach was designed when all threads were blocked equally, > >> independently on which device they were writing to, or how fast it was. > >> Since that time the writeback algorithm has changed substantially with > >> different threads getting different allowances based on non-trivial > >> heuristics. This means the simple "add 25%" heuristic is no longer > >> reliable. > >> > >> This patch changes the heuristic to ignore the global limits and > >> consider only the limit relevant to the bdi being written to. This > >> approach is already available for BDI_CAP_STRICTLIMIT users (fuse) and > >> should not introduce surprises. This has the desired result of > >> protecting the task from the consequences of large amounts of dirty data > >> queued for other devices. > > > > While I understand that you want to have per bdi throttling for those > > "special" files I am still missing how this is going to provide the > > additional room that the additnal 25% gave them previously. I might > > misremember or things have changed (what you mention as non-trivial > > heuristics) but PF_LESS_THROTTLE really needed that room to guarantee a > > forward progress. Care to expan some more on how this is handled now? > > Maybe we do not need it anymore but calling that out explicitly would be > > really helpful. > > The 25% was a means to an end, not an end in itself. > > The problem is that the NFS server needs to be able to write to the > backing filesystem when the dirty memory limits have been reached by > being totally consumed by dirty pages on the NFS filesystem. > > The 25% was just a way of giving an allowance of dirty pages to nfsd > that could not be consumed by processes writing to an NFS filesystem. > i.e. it doesn't need 25% MORE, it needs 25% PRIVATELY. Actually it only > really needs 1 page privately, but a few pages give better throughput > and 25% seemed like a good idea at the time. Yes this part is clear to me. > per-bdi throttling focuses on the "PRIVATELY" (the important bit) and > de-emphasises the 25% (the irrelevant detail). It is still not clear to me how this patch is going to behave when the global dirty throttling is essentially equal to the per-bdi - e.g. there is only a single bdi and now the PF_LOCAL_THROTTLE process doesn't have anything private. -- Michal Hocko SUSE Labs
