Commit 0b8fd3033c308e4088760aa1d38ce77197b4e074 upstream. If the writeback code writes back an inode because it has expired we currently use the non-blockin ->write_inode path. This means any inode that is pinned is skipped. With delayed logging and a workload that has very little log traffic otherwise it is very likely that an inode that gets constantly written to is always pinned, and thus we keep refusing to write it. The VM writeback code at that point redirties it and doesn't try to write it again for another 30 seconds. This means under certain scenarious time based metadata writeback never happens. Fix this by calling into xfs_log_inode for kupdate in addition to data integrity syncs, and thus transfer the inode to the log ASAP. Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxx> Reviewed-by: Dave Chinner <dchinner@xxxxxxxxxx> Tested-by: Mark Tinguely <tinguely@xxxxxxx> Reviewed-by: Mark Tinguely <tinguely@xxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Ben Myers <bpm@xxxxxxx> Index: linux-2.6/fs/xfs/linux-2.6/xfs_super.c =================================================================== --- linux-2.6.orig/fs/xfs/linux-2.6/xfs_super.c 2012-01-04 10:27:56.789986299 +0100 +++ linux-2.6/fs/xfs/linux-2.6/xfs_super.c 2012-01-04 13:32:13.843253565 +0100 @@ -871,27 +871,6 @@ xfs_fs_dirty_inode( } STATIC int -xfs_log_inode( - struct xfs_inode *ip) -{ - struct xfs_mount *mp = ip->i_mount; - struct xfs_trans *tp; - int error; - - tp = xfs_trans_alloc(mp, XFS_TRANS_FSYNC_TS); - error = xfs_trans_reserve(tp, 0, XFS_FSYNC_TS_LOG_RES(mp), 0, 0, 0); - if (error) { - xfs_trans_cancel(tp, 0); - return error; - } - - xfs_ilock(ip, XFS_ILOCK_EXCL); - xfs_trans_ijoin_ref(tp, ip, XFS_ILOCK_EXCL); - xfs_trans_log_inode(tp, ip, XFS_ILOG_CORE); - return xfs_trans_commit(tp, 0); -} - -STATIC int xfs_fs_write_inode( struct inode *inode, struct writeback_control *wbc) @@ -904,10 +883,8 @@ xfs_fs_write_inode( if (XFS_FORCED_SHUTDOWN(mp)) return -XFS_ERROR(EIO); - if (!ip->i_update_core) - return 0; - if (wbc->sync_mode == WB_SYNC_ALL) { + if (wbc->sync_mode == WB_SYNC_ALL || wbc->for_kupdate) { /* * Make sure the inode has made it it into the log. Instead * of forcing it all the way to stable storage using a @@ -916,11 +893,14 @@ xfs_fs_write_inode( * of synchronous log foces dramatically. */ xfs_ioend_wait(ip); - error = xfs_log_inode(ip); + error = xfs_log_dirty_inode(ip, NULL, 0); if (error) goto out; return 0; } else { + if (!ip->i_update_core) + return 0; + /* * We make this non-blocking if the inode is contended, return * EAGAIN to indicate to the caller that they did not succeed. _______________________________________________ xfs mailing list xfs@xxxxxxxxxxx http://oss.sgi.com/mailman/listinfo/xfs