From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail190.messagelabs.com (mail190.messagelabs.com [216.82.249.51]) by kanga.kvack.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6FC3E8D003B for ; Thu, 21 Apr 2011 03:14:39 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 03:14:26 -0400 From: Christoph Hellwig Subject: Re: [PATCH 5/6] writeback: try more writeback as long as something was written Message-ID: <20110421071426.GA24790@infradead.org> References: <20110419030003.108796967@intel.com> <20110419030532.778889102@intel.com> <20110419102016.GD5257@quack.suse.cz> <20110419111601.GA18961@localhost> <20110419211008.GD9556@quack.suse.cz> <20110420075053.GB30672@localhost> <20110420152211.GC4991@quack.suse.cz> <20110421033325.GA13764@localhost> <20110421070947.GA12436@dastard> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20110421070947.GA12436@dastard> Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org List-ID: To: Dave Chinner Cc: Wu Fengguang , Jan Kara , Andrew Morton , Mel Gorman , Trond Myklebust , Itaru Kitayama , Minchan Kim , LKML , "linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org" , Linux Memory Management List On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 05:09:47PM +1000, Dave Chinner wrote: > Likely just timing. When IO completes and updates the inode IO size, > XFS calls mark_inode_dirty() again to ensure that the metadata that > was changed gets written out at a later point in time. > Hence every single file that is created by the test will be marked > dirty again after the first write has returned and disappeared. > > Why you see different numbers? it's timing dependent based on Io > completion rates - if you have a fast disk the IO completion can > occur before write_inode() is called and so the inode can be written > and the dirty page state removed in the one writeback_single_inode() > call... > > That's my initial guess without looking at it in any real detail, > anyway. We shouldn't have I_DIRTY_PAGES set for that case, as we only redirty metadata. But we're actually doing a xfs_mark_inode_dirty, which dirties all of I_DIRTY, which includes I_DIRTY_PAGES. I guess it should change to __mark_inode_dirty(inode, I_DIRTY_SYNC | I_DIRTY_DATASYNC); -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Fight unfair telecom internet charges in Canada: sign http://stopthemeter.ca/ Don't email: email@kvack.org