From: Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@atomlin.com>
To: axboe@kernel.dk, rostedt@goodmis.org, mhiramat@kernel.org,
mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com
Cc: johannes.thumshirn@wdc.com, kch@nvidia.com, bvanassche@acm.org,
dlemoal@kernel.org, ritesh.list@gmail.com, loberman@redhat.com,
neelx@suse.com, sean@ashe.io, mproche@gmail.com,
chjohnst@gmail.com, linux-block@vger.kernel.org,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-trace-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: [PATCH v3 0/2] blk-mq: introduce tag starvation observability
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2026 18:19:54 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260319221956.332770-1-atomlin@atomlin.com> (raw)
Hi Jens, Steve, Masami,
In high-performance storage environments, particularly when utilising RAID
controllers with shared tag sets (BLK_MQ_F_TAG_HCTX_SHARED), severe latency
spikes can occur when fast devices are starved of available tags.
Currently, diagnosing this specific queue contention requires deploying
dynamic kprobes or inferring sleep states, which lacks a simple,
out-of-the-box diagnostic path.
This short series introduces dedicated, low-overhead observability for tag
exhaustion events in the block layer:
- Patch 1 introduces the "block_rq_tag_wait" tracepoint in the tag
allocation slow-path to capture precise, event-based starvation.
- Patch 2 complements this by exposing "wait_on_hw_tag" and
"wait_on_sched_tag" atomic counters via debugfs for quick,
point-in-time cumulative polling.
Together, these provide storage engineers with zero-configuration
mechanisms to definitively identify shared-tag bottlenecks.
Please let me know your thoughts.
Changes since v2 [1]:
- Added "Reviewed-by:" and "Tested-by:" tags for patch 1
- Evaluate is_sched_tag directly within TP_fast_assign (Steven Rostedt)
- Introduced atomic counters via debugfs
Changes since v1 [2]:
- Improved the description of the trace point (Damien Le Moal)
- Removed the redundant "active requests" (Laurence Oberman)
- Introduced pool-specific starvation tracking
[1]: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20260319015300.287653-1-atomlin@atomlin.com/
[2]: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20260317182835.258183-1-atomlin@atomlin.com/
Aaron Tomlin (2):
blk-mq: add tracepoint block_rq_tag_wait
blk-mq: expose tag starvation counts via debugfs
block/blk-mq-debugfs.c | 56 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
block/blk-mq-debugfs.h | 7 +++++
block/blk-mq-tag.c | 8 ++++++
include/linux/blk-mq.h | 10 +++++++
include/trace/events/block.h | 43 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
5 files changed, 124 insertions(+)
--
2.51.0
next reply other threads:[~2026-03-19 22:20 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-03-19 22:19 Aaron Tomlin [this message]
2026-03-19 22:19 ` [PATCH v3 1/2] blk-mq: add tracepoint block_rq_tag_wait Aaron Tomlin
2026-03-19 22:19 ` [PATCH v3 2/2] blk-mq: expose tag starvation counts via debugfs Aaron Tomlin
2026-03-20 15:08 ` Laurence Oberman
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