Neil: A possible insight, these captures were all made on the server, so the rpc reply wouldn't be delayed (at least if the server is the one doing the replying). I did the captures there because I wanted to get as close to possible issues as I could. If it makes sense, I can try to capture from the client side, let me know. Filesystem being exported is BTRFS, a 6 disk array. I jumped to nfs being the trouble because that is my visibility to the issue, but it's certainly possible for it to be the underlying filesystem. Maybe the nfsd traces will give insight to this. - mike On Sun, Aug 15, 2021 at 6:20 PM NeilBrown <neilb@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Sun, 15 Aug 2021, Mike Javorski wrote: > > I managed to get a cap with several discreet freezes in it, and I > > included a chunk with 5 of them in the span of ~3000 frames. I added > > packet comments at each frame that the tshark command reported as > 1 > > sec RPC wait. Just search for "Freeze" in (wire|t)shark in packet > > details. This is with kernel 5.13.10 provided by Arch (See > > https://github.com/archlinux/linux/compare/a37da2be8e6c85...v5.13.10-arch1 > > for diff vs mainline, nothing NFS/RPC related I can identify). > > > > I tried unsuccessfully to get any failures with the 5.12.15 kernel. > > > > https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T42iX9xCdF9Oe4f7JXsnWqD8oJPrpMqV/view?usp=sharing > > > > File should be downloadable anonymously. > > Got it, thanks. > > There are 3 RPC replies that are more than 1 second after the request. > The replies are in frames 983, 1005, 1777 These roughly correspond to > where you added the "Freeze" annotation (I didn't know you could do that!). > > 983: > This is the (Start of the) reply to a READ Request in frame 980. > It is a 128K read. The whole reply has arrived by frame 1004, 2ms > later. > The request (Frame 980) is followed 13ms later by a TCP retransmit > of the request and the (20usec later) a TCP ACK from the server. > > The fact that the client needed to retransmit seems a little odd > but as it is the only retransmit in the whole capture, I don't think > we can read much into it. > > 1005: > This is the reply to a 128K READ request in frame 793 - earlier than > previous one. > So there were two READ requests, then a 2 second delay then both > replies in reverse order. > > 1777: > This is a similar READ reply - to 1761. > There were READs in 1760, 1761, and 1775 > 1760 is replied to almost immediately > 1761 gets a reply in 4 seconds (1777) > 1775 never gets a reply (in the available packet capture). > > Looking at other delays ... most READs get a reply in under a millisec. > There are about 20 where the reply is more than 1ms - the longest delay > not already mentioned is 90ms with reply 1857. > The pattern here is > READ req (1) > GETATTR req > GETATTR reply > READ req (2) > READ reply (1) > pause > READ reply (2) > > I suspect this is the same problem occurring, but it isn't so > noticeable. > > My first thought was that the reply might be getting stuck in the TCP > transmit queue on the server, but checking the TSval in the TCP > timestamp option shows that - for frame 983 which shows a 2second delay > - the TSval is also 2seconds later than the previous packet. So the > delay happens before the TCP-level decision to create the packet. > > So I cannot see any real evidence to suggest a TCP-level problem. > The time of 2 or 4 seconds - and maybe even 90ms - seem unlikely to be > caused by an NFSd problem. > > So my guess is that the delay comes from the filesystem. Maybe. > What filesystem are you exporting? > > How can we check this? Probably by turning on nfsd tracing. > There are a bunch of tracepoints that related to reading: > > trace_nfsd_read_start > trace_nfsd_read_done > trace_nfsd_read_io_done > trace_nfsd_read_err > trace_nfsd_read_splice > trace_nfsd_read_vector > trace_nfsd_read_start > trace_nfsd_read_done > > Maybe enabling them might be useful as you should be able to see if the > delay was within one read request, or between two read requests. > But I don't have much (if any) experience in enabling trace points. I > really should try that some day. Maybe you can find guidance on using > these tracepoint somewhere ... or maybe you already know how :-) > > NeilBrown
