Re: Slow file transfer speeds with CFQ IO scheduler in some cases

[Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>]

On Tue, Nov 11 2008, Jeff Moyer wrote:
> Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com> writes:
> 
> > On Tue, Nov 11 2008, Jens Axboe wrote:
> >> On Tue, Nov 11 2008, Jens Axboe wrote:
> >> > On Mon, Nov 10 2008, Jeff Moyer wrote:
> >> > > "Vitaly V. Bursov" <vitalyb@telenet.dn.ua> writes:
> >> > > 
> >> > > > Jens Axboe wrote:
> >> > > >> On Mon, Nov 10 2008, Vitaly V. Bursov wrote:
> >> > > >>> Jens Axboe wrote:
> >> > > >>>> On Mon, Nov 10 2008, Jeff Moyer wrote:
> >> > > >>>>> Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com> writes:
> >> > > >>>>>
> >> > > >>>>>> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/attachment.cgi?id=18473&action=view
> >> > > >>>>> Funny, I was going to ask the same question.  ;)  The reason Jens wants
> >> > > >>>>> you to try this patch is that nfsd may be farming off the I/O requests
> >> > > >>>>> to different threads which are then performing interleaved I/O.  The
> >> > > >>>>> above patch tries to detect this and allow cooperating processes to get
> >> > > >>>>> disk time instead of waiting for the idle timeout.
> >> > > >>>> Precisely :-)
> >> > > >>>>
> >> > > >>>> The only reason I haven't merged it yet is because of worry of extra
> >> > > >>>> cost, but I'll throw some SSD love at it and see how it turns out.
> >> > > >>>>
> >> > > >>> Sorry, but I get "oops" same moment nfs read transfer starts.
> >> > > >>> I can get directory list via nfs, read files locally (not
> >> > > >>> carefully tested, though)
> >> > > >>>
> >> > > >>> Dumps captured via netconsole, so these may not be completely accurate
> >> > > >>> but hopefully will give a hint.
> >> > > >> 
> >> > > >> Interesting, strange how that hasn't triggered here. Or perhaps the
> >> > > >> version that Jeff posted isn't the one I tried. Anyway, search for:
> >> > > >> 
> >> > > >>         RB_CLEAR_NODE(&cfqq->rb_node);
> >> > > >> 
> >> > > >> and add a
> >> > > >> 
> >> > > >>         RB_CLEAR_NODE(&cfqq->prio_node);
> >> > > >> 
> >> > > >> just below that. It's in cfq_find_alloc_queue(). I think that should fix
> >> > > >> it.
> >> > > >> 
> >> > > >
> >> > > > Same problem.
> >> > > >
> >> > > > I did make clean; make -j3; sync; on (2 times) patched kernel and it went OK
> >> > > > but It won't boot anymore with cfq with same error...
> >> > > >
> >> > > > Switching cfq io scheduler at runtime (booting with "as") appears to work with
> >> > > > two parallel local dd reads.
> >> > > 
> >> > > Strange, I can't reproduce a failure.  I'll keep trying.  For now, these
> >> > > are the results I see:
> >> > > 
> >> > > [root@maiden ~]# mount megadeth:/export/cciss /mnt/megadeth/
> >> > > [root@maiden ~]# dd if=/mnt/megadeth/file1 of=/dev/null bs=1M
> >> > > 1024+0 records in
> >> > > 1024+0 records out
> >> > > 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 26.8128 s, 40.0 MB/s
> >> > > [root@maiden ~]# umount /mnt/megadeth/
> >> > > [root@maiden ~]# mount megadeth:/export/cciss /mnt/megadeth/
> >> > > [root@maiden ~]# dd if=/mnt/megadeth/file1 of=/dev/null bs=1M
> >> > > 1024+0 records in
> >> > > 1024+0 records out
> >> > > 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 23.7025 s, 45.3 MB/s
> >> > > [root@maiden ~]# umount /mnt/megadeth/
> >> > > 
> >> > > Here is the patch, with the suggestion from Jens to switch the cfqq to
> >> > > the right priority tree when the priority is changed.
> >> > 
> >> > I don't see the issue here either. Vitaly, are you using any openvz
> >> > kernel patches? IIRC, they patch cfq so it could just be that your cfq
> >> > version is incompatible with Jeff's patch.
> >> 
> >> Heh, got it to trigger about 3 seconds after sending that email! I'll
> >> look more into it.
> >
> > OK, found the issue. A few bugs there... cfq_prio_tree_lookup() doesn't
> > even return a hit, since it just breaks and returns NULL always. That
> > can cause cfq_prio_tree_add() to screw up the rbtree. The code to
> > correct on ioprio change wasn't correct either, I changed that as well.
> > New patch below, Vitaly can you give it a spin?
> 
> Thanks for doing that!  Yeah, that was a stupid bug with the lookup
> routine.  I don't know that I agree with you that the ioprio change code
> was wrong.  I looked at all of the callers and that seemed the code path
> that was used for I/O priority *changes*.  The initial creation was
> already okay, wasn't it?

You only did it in cfq_prio_boost(), you should go one down and do it
for all prio changes. cfq_init_prio_data() gets called to fix state up
lazily when it notices a prio change, either due to prio boost or
because someone ran ionice.

-- 
Jens Axboe