The patch titled writeback: sync expired inodes first in background writeback has been added to the -mm tree. Its filename is writeback-sync-expired-inodes-first-in-background-writeback.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: sync expired inodes first in background writeback From: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@xxxxxxxxx> A background flush work may run for ever. So it's reasonable for it to mimic the kupdate behavior of syncing old/expired inodes first. At each queue_io() time, first try enqueuing only newly expired inodes. If there are zero expired inodes to work with, then relax the rule and enqueue all dirty inodes. This will help reduce the number of dirty pages encountered by page reclaim, eg. the pageout() calls. Normally older inodes contain older dirty pages, which are more close to the end of the LRU lists. So syncing older inodes first helps reducing the dirty pages reached by the page reclaim code. More background: as Mel put it, "it makes sense to write old pages first to reduce the chances page reclaim is initiating IO." Rik also presented the situation with a graph: LRU head [*] dirty page [ * * * * * * * * * * *] Ideally, most dirty pages should lie close to the LRU tail instead of LRU head. That requires the flusher thread to sync old/expired inodes first (as there are obvious correlations between inode age and page age), and to give fair opportunities to newly expired inodes rather than sticking with some large eldest inodes (as larger inodes have weaker correlations in the inode<=>page ages). This patch helps the flusher to meet both the above requirements. Side effects: it might reduce the batch size and hence reduce inode_wb_list_lock hold time, but in turn make the cluster-by-partition logic in the same function less effective on reducing disk seeks. v2: keep policy changes inside wb_writeback() and keep the wbc.older_than_this visibility as suggested by Dave. Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@xxxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mel@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: Itaru Kitayama <kitayama@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- fs/fs-writeback.c | 16 +++++++++++++++- 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff -puN fs/fs-writeback.c~writeback-sync-expired-inodes-first-in-background-writeback fs/fs-writeback.c --- a/fs/fs-writeback.c~writeback-sync-expired-inodes-first-in-background-writeback +++ a/fs/fs-writeback.c @@ -709,7 +709,7 @@ static long wb_writeback(struct bdi_writ if (work->for_background && !over_bground_thresh()) break; - if (work->for_kupdate) { + if (work->for_kupdate || work->for_background) { oldest_jif = jiffies - msecs_to_jiffies(dirty_expire_interval * 10); wbc.older_than_this = &oldest_jif; @@ -720,6 +720,7 @@ static long wb_writeback(struct bdi_writ wbc.pages_skipped = 0; wbc.inodes_cleaned = 0; +retry: trace_wbc_writeback_start(&wbc, wb->bdi); if (work->sb) __writeback_inodes_sb(work->sb, wb, &wbc); @@ -743,6 +744,19 @@ static long wb_writeback(struct bdi_writ if (wbc.inodes_cleaned) continue; /* + * background writeback will start with expired inodes, and + * if none is found, fallback to all inodes. This order helps + * reduce the number of dirty pages reaching the end of LRU + * lists and cause trouble to the page reclaim. + */ + if (work->for_background && + wbc.older_than_this && + list_empty(&wb->b_io) && + list_empty(&wb->b_more_io)) { + wbc.older_than_this = NULL; + goto retry; + } + /* * No more inodes for IO, bail */ if (!wbc.more_io) _ Patches currently in -mm which might be from fengguang.wu@xxxxxxxxx are mm-per-node-vmstat-show-proper-vmstats.patch mm-per-node-vmstat-show-proper-vmstats-fix.patch writeback-pass-writeback_control-down-to-move_expired_inodes.patch writeback-introduce-writeback_controlinodes_cleaned.patch writeback-try-more-writeback-as-long-as-something-was-written.patch writeback-the-kupdate-expire-timestamp-should-be-a-moving-target.patch writeback-sync-expired-inodes-first-in-background-writeback.patch writeback-sync-expired-inodes-first-in-background-writeback-fix.patch writeback-refill-b_io-iff-empty.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