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From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
To: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>,
	Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>, Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>,
	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>,
	"linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org" <linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Linux Memory Management List <linux-mm@kvack.org>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 4/6] writeback: dont redirty tail an inode with dirty pages
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:13:17 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20100712151317.bd9d656c.akpm@linux-foundation.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20100712153127.GB30222@localhost>

On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 23:31:27 +0800
Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com> wrote:

> > > +		} else if (inode->i_state & I_DIRTY) {
> > > +			/*
> > > +			 * At least XFS will redirty the inode during the
> > > +			 * writeback (delalloc) and on io completion (isize).
> > > +			 */
> > > +			redirty_tail(inode);
> > 
> > I'd drop the mention of XFS here - any filesystem that does delayed
> > allocation or unwritten extent conversion after Io completion will
> > cause this. Perhaps make the comment:
> > 
> > 	/*
> > 	 * Filesystems can dirty the inode during writeback
> > 	 * operations, such as delayed allocation during submission
> > 	 * or metadata updates after data IO completion.
> > 	 */
> 
> Thanks, comments updated accordingly.
> 
> ---
> writeback: don't redirty tail an inode with dirty pages
> 
> This avoids delaying writeback for an expired (XFS) inode with lots of
> dirty pages, but no active dirtier at the moment. Previously we only do
> that for the kupdate case.
> 

You didn't actually explain the _reason_ for making this change. 
Please always do that.

The patch is...  surprisingly complicated, although the end result
looks OK.  This is not aided by the partial duplication between
mapping_tagged(PAGECACHE_TAG_DIRTY) and I_DIRTY_PAGES.  I don't think
we can easily remove I_DIRTY_PAGES because it's used for the
did-someone-just-dirty-a-page test here.

This code is way too complex and fragile and I fear that anything we do
to it will break something :(

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  reply	other threads:[~2010-07-12 22:13 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 36+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2010-07-11  2:06 [PATCH 0/6] writeback cleanups and trivial fixes Wu Fengguang
2010-07-11  2:06 ` [PATCH 1/6] writeback: take account of NR_WRITEBACK_TEMP in balance_dirty_pages() Wu Fengguang
2010-07-12 21:52   ` Andrew Morton
2010-07-13  8:58     ` Miklos Szeredi
2010-07-15 14:50       ` Wu Fengguang
2010-07-11  2:06 ` [PATCH 2/6] writeback: reduce calls to global_page_state " Wu Fengguang
2010-07-26 15:19   ` Jan Kara
2010-07-27  3:59     ` Wu Fengguang
2010-07-27  9:12       ` Jan Kara
2010-07-28  2:04         ` Wu Fengguang
2010-08-03 14:55   ` Peter Zijlstra
2010-07-11  2:06 ` [PATCH 3/6] writeback: avoid unnecessary calculation of bdi dirty thresholds Wu Fengguang
2010-07-12 21:56   ` Andrew Morton
2010-07-15 14:55     ` Wu Fengguang
2010-07-19 21:35   ` Andrew Morton
2010-07-20  3:34     ` Wu Fengguang
2010-07-20  4:14       ` Andrew Morton
2010-08-03 15:03   ` Peter Zijlstra
2010-08-03 15:10     ` Wu Fengguang
2010-08-04 16:41     ` Wu Fengguang
2010-08-04 17:10       ` Peter Zijlstra
2010-07-11  2:07 ` [PATCH 4/6] writeback: dont redirty tail an inode with dirty pages Wu Fengguang
2010-07-12  2:01   ` Dave Chinner
2010-07-12 15:31     ` Wu Fengguang
2010-07-12 22:13       ` Andrew Morton [this message]
2010-07-15 15:35         ` Wu Fengguang
2010-07-11  2:07 ` [PATCH 5/6] writeback: fix queue_io() ordering Wu Fengguang
2010-07-12 22:15   ` Andrew Morton
2010-07-11  2:07 ` [PATCH 6/6] writeback: merge for_kupdate and !for_kupdate cases Wu Fengguang
2010-07-12  2:08   ` Dave Chinner
2010-07-12 15:52     ` Wu Fengguang
2010-07-12 22:06       ` Dave Chinner
2010-07-12 22:22       ` Andrew Morton
2010-08-05 16:01         ` Wu Fengguang
2010-07-11  2:44 ` [PATCH 0/6] writeback cleanups and trivial fixes Christoph Hellwig
2010-07-11  2:50   ` Wu Fengguang

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