The patch titled writeback: guard against jiffies wraparound on inode->dirtied_when checks (try #3) has been added to the -mm tree. Its filename is writeback-guard-against-jiffies-wraparound-on-inode-dirtied_when-checks-try-3.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 *** See http://userweb.kernel.org/~akpm/stuff/added-to-mm.txt to find out what to do about this The current -mm tree may be found at http://userweb.kernel.org/~akpm/mmotm/ ------------------------------------------------------ Subject: writeback: guard against jiffies wraparound on inode->dirtied_when checks (try #3) From: Jeff Layton <jlayton@xxxxxxxxxx> The dirtied_when value on an inode is supposed to represent the first time that an inode has one of its pages dirtied. This value is in units of jiffies. It's used in several places in the writeback code to determine when to write out an inode. The problem is that these checks assume that dirtied_when is updated periodically. If an inode is continuously being used for I/O it can be persistently marked as dirty and will continue to age. Once the time compared to is greater than or equal to half the maximum of the jiffies type, the logic of the time_*() macros inverts and the opposite of what is needed is returned. On 32-bit architectures that's just under 25 days (assuming HZ == 1000). As the least-recently dirtied inode, it'll end up being the first one that pdflush will try to write out. sync_sb_inodes does this check: /* Was this inode dirtied after sync_sb_inodes was called? */ if (time_after(inode->dirtied_when, start)) break; ...but now dirtied_when appears to be in the future. sync_sb_inodes bails out without attempting to write any dirty inodes. When this occurs, pdflush will stop writing out inodes for this superblock. Nothing can unwedge it until jiffies moves out of the problematic window. This patch fixes this problem by changing the checks against dirtied_when to also check whether it appears to be in the future. If it does, then we consider the value to be far in the past. This should shrink the problematic window of time to such a small period (30s) as not to matter. Signed-off-by: Jeff Layton <jlayton@xxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@xxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Ian Kent <raven@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@xxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- fs/fs-writeback.c | 26 ++++++++++++++++++++++---- 1 file changed, 22 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff -puN fs/fs-writeback.c~writeback-guard-against-jiffies-wraparound-on-inode-dirtied_when-checks-try-3 fs/fs-writeback.c --- a/fs/fs-writeback.c~writeback-guard-against-jiffies-wraparound-on-inode-dirtied_when-checks-try-3 +++ a/fs/fs-writeback.c @@ -196,7 +196,7 @@ static void redirty_tail(struct inode *i struct inode *tail_inode; tail_inode = list_entry(sb->s_dirty.next, struct inode, i_list); - if (!time_after_eq(inode->dirtied_when, + if (time_before(inode->dirtied_when, tail_inode->dirtied_when)) inode->dirtied_when = jiffies; } @@ -220,6 +220,21 @@ static void inode_sync_complete(struct i wake_up_bit(&inode->i_state, __I_SYNC); } +static bool inode_dirtied_after(struct inode *inode, unsigned long t) +{ + bool ret = time_after(inode->dirtied_when, t); +#ifndef CONFIG_64BIT + /* + * For inodes being constantly redirtied, dirtied_when can get stuck. + * It _appears_ to be in the future, but is actually in distant past. + * This test is necessary to prevent such wrapped-around relative times + * from permanently stopping the whole pdflush writeback. + */ + ret = ret && time_before_eq(inode->dirtied_when, jiffies); +#endif + return ret; +} + /* * Move expired dirty inodes from @delaying_queue to @dispatch_queue. */ @@ -231,7 +246,7 @@ static void move_expired_inodes(struct l struct inode *inode = list_entry(delaying_queue->prev, struct inode, i_list); if (older_than_this && - time_after(inode->dirtied_when, *older_than_this)) + inode_dirtied_after(inode, *older_than_this)) break; list_move(&inode->i_list, dispatch_queue); } @@ -492,8 +507,11 @@ void generic_sync_sb_inodes(struct super continue; /* blockdev has wrong queue */ } - /* Was this inode dirtied after sync_sb_inodes was called? */ - if (time_after(inode->dirtied_when, start)) + /* + * Was this inode dirtied after sync_sb_inodes was called? + * This keeps sync from extra jobs and livelock. + */ + if (inode_dirtied_after(inode, start)) break; /* Is another pdflush already flushing this queue? */ _ Patches currently in -mm which might be from jlayton@xxxxxxxxxx are origin.patch linux-next.patch writeback-guard-against-jiffies-wraparound-on-inode-dirtied_when-checks-try-3.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