On Sat, Sep 29, 2007 at 01:48:01PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote: > > On Sat, 2007-09-29 at 19:04 +0800, Fengguang Wu wrote: > > On Thu, Sep 27, 2007 at 11:32:36PM -0700, Chakri n wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > > > In my testing, a unresponsive file system can hang all I/O in the system. > > > This is not seen in 2.4. > > > > > > I started 20 threads doing I/O on a NFS share. They are just doing 4K > > > writes in a loop. > > > > > > Now I stop NFS server hosting the NFS share and start a > > > "dd" process to write a file on local EXT3 file system. > > > > > > # dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/x count=1000 > > > > > > This process never progresses. > > > > Peter, do you think this patch will help? > > In another sub-thread: > > > It's works on .23-rc8-mm2 with out any problems. > > > > "dd" process does not hang any more. > > > > Thanks for all the help. > > > > Cheers > > --Chakri > > So the per-bdi dirty patches that are in -mm already fix the problem. That's good. But still it could be a good candidate for 2.6.22.x or even 2.6.23. > > === > > writeback: avoid possible balance_dirty_pages() lockup on light-load bdi > > > > On a busy-writing system, a writer could be hold up infinitely on a > > light-load device. It will be trying to sync more than enough dirty data. > > > > The problem case: > > > > 0. sda/nr_dirty >= dirty_limit; > > sdb/nr_dirty == 0 > > 1. dd writes 32 pages on sdb > > 2. balance_dirty_pages() blocks dd, and tries to write 6MB. > > 3. it never gets there: there's only 128KB dirty data. > > 4. dd may be blocked for a loooong time as long as sda is overloaded > > > > Fix it by returning on 'zero dirty inodes' in the current bdi. > > (In fact there are slight differences between 'dirty inodes' and 'dirty pages'. > > But there is no available counters for 'dirty pages'.) > > > > Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@xxxxxxxxx> > > Signed-off-by: Fengguang Wu <wfg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > > --- > > mm/page-writeback.c | 3 +++ > > 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+) > > > > --- linux-2.6.22.orig/mm/page-writeback.c > > +++ linux-2.6.22/mm/page-writeback.c > > @@ -227,6 +227,9 @@ static void balance_dirty_pages(struct a > > if (nr_reclaimable + global_page_state(NR_WRITEBACK) <= > > dirty_thresh) > > break; > > + if (list_empty(&mapping->host->i_sb->s_dirty) && > > + list_empty(&mapping->host->i_sb->s_io)) > > + break; > > > > if (!dirty_exceeded) > > dirty_exceeded = 1; > > > > On the patch itself, not sure if it would have been enough. As soon as > there is a single dirty inode on the list one would get caught in the > same problem as before. That should not be a problem. Normally the few new dirty inodes will be all cleaned in one go and there are no more dirty inodes left(at least for a moment). Hmm, I guess the new 'break' should be moved immediately after writeback_inodes()... > That is, if NFS_dirty+NFS_unstable+NFS_writeback > dirty_limit this > break won't fix it. In fact this patch exactly targets at this condition. When NFS* < dirty_limit, Chakri won't see the lockup at all. The problem was, there are only two 'break's in the loop, and neither one evaluates to true for his dd command. _______________________________________________ linux-pm mailing list linux-pm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.linux-foundation.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-pm