This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled
loop: Select I/O scheduler 'none' from inside add_disk()
to the 4.14-stable tree which can be found at:
http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git;a=summary
The filename of the patch is:
loop-select-i-o-scheduler-none-from-inside-add_disk.patch
and it can be found in the queue-4.14 subdirectory.
If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree,
please let <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> know about it.
>From 2112f5c1330a671fa852051d85cb9eadc05d7eb7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Bart Van Assche <bvanassche@xxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2021 10:42:00 -0700
Subject: loop: Select I/O scheduler 'none' from inside add_disk()
From: Bart Van Assche <bvanassche@xxxxxxx>
commit 2112f5c1330a671fa852051d85cb9eadc05d7eb7 upstream.
We noticed that the user interface of Android devices becomes very slow
under memory pressure. This is because Android uses the zram driver on top
of the loop driver for swapping, because under memory pressure the swap
code alternates reads and writes quickly, because mq-deadline is the
default scheduler for loop devices and because mq-deadline delays writes by
five seconds for such a workload with default settings. Fix this by making
the kernel select I/O scheduler 'none' from inside add_disk() for loop
devices. This default can be overridden at any time from user space,
e.g. via a udev rule. This approach has an advantage compared to changing
the I/O scheduler from userspace from 'mq-deadline' into 'none', namely
that synchronize_rcu() does not get called.
This patch changes the default I/O scheduler for loop devices from
'mq-deadline' into 'none'.
Additionally, this patch reduces the Android boot time on my test setup
with 0.5 seconds compared to configuring the loop I/O scheduler from user
space.
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxx>
Cc: Ming Lei <ming.lei@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Tetsuo Handa <penguin-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Martijn Coenen <maco@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Jaegeuk Kim <jaegeuk@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Bart Van Assche <bvanassche@xxxxxxx>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20210805174200.3250718-3-bvanassche@xxxxxxx
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@xxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
drivers/block/loop.c | 3 ++-
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
--- a/drivers/block/loop.c
+++ b/drivers/block/loop.c
@@ -1846,7 +1846,8 @@ static int loop_add(struct loop_device *
lo->tag_set.queue_depth = 128;
lo->tag_set.numa_node = NUMA_NO_NODE;
lo->tag_set.cmd_size = sizeof(struct loop_cmd);
- lo->tag_set.flags = BLK_MQ_F_SHOULD_MERGE | BLK_MQ_F_SG_MERGE;
+ lo->tag_set.flags = BLK_MQ_F_SHOULD_MERGE | BLK_MQ_F_SG_MERGE |
+ BLK_MQ_F_NO_SCHED_BY_DEFAULT;
lo->tag_set.driver_data = lo;
err = blk_mq_alloc_tag_set(&lo->tag_set);
Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from bvanassche@xxxxxxx are
queue-4.14/loop-select-i-o-scheduler-none-from-inside-add_disk.patch
queue-4.14/block-fix-a-source-code-comment-in-include-uapi-linu.patch
