From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Wu Fengguang Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/3] writeback: introduce wbc.tagged_sync for the WB_SYNC_NONE sync stage Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 22:06:09 +0800 Message-ID: <20110505140609.GB9409@localhost> References: <20110502031750.135798606@intel.com> <20110502033035.537736600@intel.com> <20110504210059.GG6968@quack.suse.cz> <20110505121402.GA1294@localhost> <20110505135508.GE5323@quack.suse.cz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Andrew Morton , Dave Chinner , Christoph Hellwig , LKML , "linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org" To: Jan Kara Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20110505135508.GE5323@quack.suse.cz> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-fsdevel.vger.kernel.org On Thu, May 05, 2011 at 09:55:08PM +0800, Jan Kara wrote: > On Thu 05-05-11 20:14:02, Wu Fengguang wrote: > > On Thu, May 05, 2011 at 05:00:59AM +0800, Jan Kara wrote: > > > On Mon 02-05-11 11:17:51, Wu Fengguang wrote: > > > > sync(2) is performed in two stages: the WB_SYNC_NONE sync and the > > > > WB_SYNC_ALL sync. Tag the first stage with wbc.tagged_sync and do > > > > livelock prevention for it, too. > > > > > > > > Note that writeback_inodes_sb() is called by not only sync(), they are > > > > treated the same because the other callers need also need livelock > > > > prevention. > > > I was thinking about this and could not find any - which other callers > > > of writeback_inodes_sb() need the livelock prevention? > > > > For example, the writeback_inodes_sb_if_idle() call from ext4. > > In general anyone that pass get_nr_dirty_pages() as work->nr_pages > > may be highly over-estimating the work set. > OK, I see what you mean. I agree using tagging in these cases probably > makes sense. > > > It won't be directly livelocked since ext4 won't wait for completion, > > however there is possibility the works queued behind are delayed and > > livelocked. > Actually it will, writeback_inodes_sb() waits for completion (because of > s_umount locking). ext4 should use writeback_inodes_sb_if_idle_nr() (with > some relatively small number) anyway to avoid the pauses. Ah yes! > > Ideally simple ->nr_pages works should be given lower priority and > > even may be merged with each other, and that would be future work. > Merging works wanting to do the same thing would be nice. I though about > it some time ago for a while but getting all the combinations right and > making the merging code resonably simple was hard so I postponed it for > later because it was not urgent. Agreed. Thanks, Fengguang