From: Boris Burkov <boris@bur.io>
To: linux-btrfs@vger.kernel.org, kernel-team@fb.com
Subject: [PATCH v4 0/4] btrfs: improve stalls under sudden writeback
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2026 10:48:47 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <cover.1775756789.git.boris@bur.io> (raw)
If you have a system with very large memory (TiBs) and a normal
percentage based dirty_ratio/dirty_background_ratio like the defaults of
20%/10%, then we can theoretically rack up 100s of GiB of dirty pages
before doing any writeback. This is further exacerbated if we also see a
sudden drop in the free memory due to a large allocation. If we
(relatively likely for a large ram system) also have a large disk, we are
unlikely to do trigger much preemptive metadata reclaim either.
Once we do start doing writeback with such a large supply, the results
are somewhat ugly. The delalloc work generates a huge amount of delayed
refs without proper reservations which sends the metadata space system
into a tailspin trying to run yet more delalloc to free space.
Ultimately, the system stalls waiting for huge amounts of ordered
extents and delayed refs blocking all users in start_transaction() on
tickets in reserve_space().
This patch series aims to address these issues in a relatively targeted
way by improving our reservations for delalloc delayed refs and by doing
some very basic smoothing of the work in flush_space(). Further work
could be done to improve flush_space() heuristics and latency but this
is already a big help on my observed workloads.
I was able to reproduce stalls on a more "modest" system with 264GiB of
ram by using a somewhat silly 80% dirty_ratio.
I was unfortunately unable to reproduce any stalls on a yet smaller
system with only 32GiB of ram.
The first 2 patches do the delayed_ref rsv accounting on btrfs_inode,
mirroring inode->block_rsv.
The 3th patch is a cleanup to the types counting max extents
The 4th patch reduces the size of the unit of work in shrink_delalloc()
to further reduce stalls.
---
Changelog:
v4:
- Treat the extent tree data delayed ref as needing reservation for two cow
operations.
v3:
- Merge csum reservation patch (2) into main delalloc delrefs rsv patch (1)
- Add delayed refs reservations for RST and subvol tree metadata cow to
patch 1.
- Do the migration in the nocow/prealloc finish_one_ordered() cases as
there are still metadata delayed refs generated.
- Double delref rsv for cows (add+drop). This seems really conservative
to me, but I think it is correct. If we like it, it needs to happen
more places too...
- Upgrade ASSERTs in patch 3 (old patch 4) to log unexpected values.
- Remove unused return value in migrate function.
- Various stylistic issues in several patches.
v2:
- patch 1 no longer embeds a new block_rsv on btrfs_inode for the
delayed reservation. Instead it does the reservation on
inode->block_rsv and migrates it to trans->delayed_rsv at the moment
of truth.
Boris Burkov (4):
btrfs: reserve space for delayed_refs in delalloc
btrfs: account for compression in delalloc extent reservation
btrfs: make inode->outstanding_extents a u64
btrfs: cap shrink_delalloc iterations to 128M
fs/btrfs/btrfs_inode.h | 20 ++++++--
fs/btrfs/delalloc-space.c | 79 +++++++++++++++++++++++++------
fs/btrfs/delalloc-space.h | 3 ++
fs/btrfs/fs.h | 13 ------
fs/btrfs/inode.c | 90 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------
fs/btrfs/ordered-data.c | 4 +-
fs/btrfs/space-info.c | 31 ++++++++-----
fs/btrfs/tests/inode-tests.c | 18 ++++----
fs/btrfs/transaction.c | 36 ++++++---------
include/trace/events/btrfs.h | 8 ++--
10 files changed, 205 insertions(+), 97 deletions(-)
--
2.53.0
next reply other threads:[~2026-04-09 17:49 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-04-09 17:48 Boris Burkov [this message]
2026-04-09 17:48 ` [PATCH v4 1/4] btrfs: reserve space for delayed_refs in delalloc Boris Burkov
2026-04-10 16:07 ` Filipe Manana
2026-04-09 17:48 ` [PATCH v4 2/4] btrfs: account for compression in delalloc extent reservation Boris Burkov
2026-04-09 17:48 ` [PATCH v4 3/4] btrfs: make inode->outstanding_extents a u64 Boris Burkov
2026-04-13 18:43 ` David Sterba
2026-04-09 17:48 ` [PATCH v4 4/4] btrfs: cap shrink_delalloc iterations to 128M Boris Burkov
2026-04-13 18:41 ` [PATCH v4 0/4] btrfs: improve stalls under sudden writeback David Sterba
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