On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 01:28:11PM +0800, Fengguang Wu wrote: [..] > The key ideas and comments can be found in two functions in the patch: > - cfq_scale_slice() > - blkcg_update_dirty_ratelimit() > The other changes are mainly supporting bits. > > It adapts the existing interfaces > - blkio.throttle.write_bps_device > - blkio.weight > from the semantics "for direct IO" to "for direct+buffered IO" (it > now handles write IO only, but should be trivial to cover reads). It > tries to do 1:1 split of direct:buffered writes inside the cgroup > which essentially implements intra-cgroup proportional weights. Hey, if you can explain in few lines the design and what's the objective its much easier to understand then going through the patch and first trying to understand the internals of writeback. Regarding upper limit (blkio.throttle_write_bps_device) thre are only two problems with doing it a device layer. - We lose context information for buffered writes. - This can be solved by per inode cgroup association. - Or solve it by throttling writer synchronously in balance_dirty_pages(). I had done that by exporting a hook from blk-throttle so that writeback layer does not have to worry about all the details. - Filesystems can get seriliazed. - This needs to be solved by filesystems. - Or again, invoke blk-throttle hook from balance_dirty_pages. It will solve the problem for buffered writes but direct writes will still have filesystem serialization issue. So it needs to be solved by filesystems anyway. - Throttling for network file systems. - This would be the only advantage or implementing things at higher layer so that we don't have to build special knowledge of throttling in lower layers. So which of the above problem you are exactly solving by throttling by writes in writeback layer and why exporting a throttling hook from blk-throttle to balance_drity_pages()is not a good idea? Thanks Vivek -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Fight unfair telecom internet charges in Canada: sign http://stopthemeter.ca/ Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>