Dear xfs developer,
I was doing some testing on a Linux 5.10.1 system with two 100 TB xfs filesystems on md raid6 raids.
The stress test was essentially `cp -a`ing a Linux source repository with two threads in parallel on each filesystem.
After about on hour, the processes to one filesystem (md1) blocked, 30 minutes later the process to the other filesystem (md0) did.
root 7322 2167 0 Dec16 pts/1 00:00:06 cp -a /jbod/M8068/scratch/linux /jbod/M8068/scratch/1/linux.018.TMP
root 7329 2169 0 Dec16 pts/1 00:00:05 cp -a /jbod/M8068/scratch/linux /jbod/M8068/scratch/2/linux.019.TMP
root 13856 2170 0 Dec16 pts/1 00:00:08 cp -a /jbod/M8067/scratch/linux /jbod/M8067/scratch/2/linux.028.TMP
root 13899 2168 0 Dec16 pts/1 00:00:05 cp -a /jbod/M8067/scratch/linux /jbod/M8067/scratch/1/linux.027.TMP
Some info from the system (all stack traces, slabinfo) is available here: https://owww.molgen.mpg.de/~buczek/2020-12-16.info.txt
It stands out, that there are many (549 for md0, but only 10 for md1) "xfs-conv" threads all with stacks like this
[<0>] xfs_log_commit_cil+0x6cc/0x7c0
[<0>] __xfs_trans_commit+0xab/0x320
[<0>] xfs_iomap_write_unwritten+0xcb/0x2e0
[<0>] xfs_end_ioend+0xc6/0x110
[<0>] xfs_end_io+0xad/0xe0
[<0>] process_one_work+0x1dd/0x3e0
[<0>] worker_thread+0x2d/0x3b0
[<0>] kthread+0x118/0x130
[<0>] ret_from_fork+0x22/0x30
xfs_log_commit_cil+0x6cc is
xfs_log_commit_cil()
xlog_cil_push_background(log)
xlog_wait(&cil->xc_push_wait, &cil->xc_push_lock);
Some other threads, including the four "cp" commands are also blocking at xfs_log_commit_cil+0x6cc
There are also single "flush" process for each md device with this stack signature:
[<0>] xfs_map_blocks+0xbf/0x400
[<0>] iomap_do_writepage+0x15e/0x880
[<0>] write_cache_pages+0x175/0x3f0
[<0>] iomap_writepages+0x1c/0x40
[<0>] xfs_vm_writepages+0x59/0x80
[<0>] do_writepages+0x4b/0xe0
[<0>] __writeback_single_inode+0x42/0x300
[<0>] writeback_sb_inodes+0x198/0x3f0
[<0>] __writeback_inodes_wb+0x5e/0xc0
[<0>] wb_writeback+0x246/0x2d0
[<0>] wb_workfn+0x26e/0x490
[<0>] process_one_work+0x1dd/0x3e0
[<0>] worker_thread+0x2d/0x3b0
[<0>] kthread+0x118/0x130
[<0>] ret_from_fork+0x22/0x30
xfs_map_blocks+0xbf is the
xfs_ilock(ip, XFS_ILOCK_SHARED);
in xfs_map_blocks().
The system is low on free memory
MemTotal: 197587764 kB
MemFree: 2196496 kB
MemAvailable: 189895408 kB
but responsive.
I have an out of tree driver for the HBA ( smartpqi 2.1.6-005 pulled from linux-scsi) , but it is unlikely that this blocking is related to that, because the md block devices itself are responsive (`xxd /dev/md0` )
I can keep the system in the state for a while. Is there an idea what was going from or an idea what data I could collect from the running system to help? I have full debug info and could walk lists or retrieve data structures with gdb.
Best
Donald
