The patch titled Subject: fs/notify: optimize inotify/fsnotify code for unwatched files has been added to the -mm tree. Its filename is fs-optimize-inotify-fsnotify-code-for-unwatched-files.patch This patch should soon appear at http://ozlabs.org/~akpm/mmots/broken-out/fs-optimize-inotify-fsnotify-code-for-unwatched-files.patch and later at http://ozlabs.org/~akpm/mmotm/broken-out/fs-optimize-inotify-fsnotify-code-for-unwatched-files.patch Before you just go and hit "reply", please: a) Consider who else should be cc'ed b) Prefer to cc a suitable mailing list as well c) Ideally: find the original patch on the mailing list and do a reply-to-all to that, adding suitable additional cc's *** Remember to use Documentation/SubmitChecklist when testing your code *** The -mm tree is included into linux-next and is updated there every 3-4 working days ------------------------------------------------------ From: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: fs/notify: optimize inotify/fsnotify code for unwatched files I have a _tiny_ microbenchmark that sits in a loop and writes single bytes to a file. Writing one byte to a tmpfs file is around 2x slower than reading one byte from a file, which is a _bit_ more than I expecte. This is a dumb benchmark, but I think it's hard to deny that write() is a hot path and we should avoid unnecessary overhead there. I did a 'perf record' of 30-second samples of read and write. The top item in a diffprofile is srcu_read_lock() from fsnotify(). There are active inotify fd's from systemd, but nothing is actually listening to the file or its part of the filesystem. I *think* we can avoid taking the srcu_read_lock() for the common case where there are no actual marks on the file. This means that there will both be nothing to notify for *and* implies that there is no need for clearing the ignore mask. This patch gave a 13.1% speedup in writes/second on my test, which is an improvement from the 10.8% that I saw with the last version. Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Reviewed-by: Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxxx> Cc: Al Viro <viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Eric Paris <eparis@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: John McCutchan <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Robert Love <rlove@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- fs/notify/fsnotify.c | 10 ++++++++++ 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+) diff -puN fs/notify/fsnotify.c~fs-optimize-inotify-fsnotify-code-for-unwatched-files fs/notify/fsnotify.c --- a/fs/notify/fsnotify.c~fs-optimize-inotify-fsnotify-code-for-unwatched-files +++ a/fs/notify/fsnotify.c @@ -205,6 +205,16 @@ int fsnotify(struct inode *to_tell, __u3 mnt = NULL; /* + * Optimization: srcu_read_lock() has a memory barrier which can + * be expensive. It protects walking the *_fsnotify_marks lists. + * However, if we do not walk the lists, we do not have to do + * SRCU because we have no references to any objects and do not + * need SRCU to keep them "alive". + */ + if (hlist_empty(&to_tell->i_fsnotify_marks) && + (!mnt || hlist_empty(&mnt->mnt_fsnotify_marks))) + return 0; + /* * if this is a modify event we may need to clear the ignored masks * otherwise return if neither the inode nor the vfsmount care about * this type of event. _ Patches currently in -mm which might be from dave.hansen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx are fs-optimize-inotify-fsnotify-code-for-unwatched-files.patch do_shared_fault-check-that-mmap_sem-is-held.patch -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe mm-commits" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html