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From: Wanpeng Li <liwanp@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
To: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Cc: Namjae Jeon <linkinjeon@gmail.com>,
	fengguang.wu@intel.com, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	Namjae Jeon <namjae.jeon@samsung.com>,
	Vivek Trivedi <t.vivek@samsung.com>,
	Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] writeback: fix writeback cache thrashing
Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2013 08:51:04 +0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20130101005104.GA23383@hacker.(null)> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20121231113054.GC7564@quack.suse.cz>

On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 12:30:54PM +0100, Jan Kara wrote:
>On Sun 30-12-12 14:59:50, Namjae Jeon wrote:
>> From: Namjae Jeon <namjae.jeon@samsung.com>
>> 
>> Consider Process A: huge I/O on sda
>>         doing heavy write operation - dirty memory becomes more
>>         than dirty_background_ratio
>>         on HDD - flusher thread flush-8:0
>> 
>> Consider Process B: small I/O on sdb
>>         doing while [1]; read 1024K + rewrite 1024K + sleep 2sec
>>         on Flash device - flusher thread flush-8:16
>> 
>> As Process A is a heavy dirtier, dirty memory becomes more
>> than dirty_background_thresh. Due to this, below check becomes
>> true(checking global_page_state in over_bground_thresh)
>> for all bdi devices(even for very small dirtied bdi - sdb):
>> 
>> In this case, even small cached data on 'sdb' is forced to flush
>> and writeback cache thrashing happens.
>> 
>> When we added debug prints inside above 'if' condition and ran
>> above Process A(heavy dirtier on bdi with flush-8:0) and
>> Process B(1024K frequent read/rewrite on bdi with flush-8:16)
>> we got below prints:
>> 
>> [Test setup: ARM dual core CPU, 512 MB RAM]
>> 
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  56064 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  56704 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE = 84720 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE = 94720 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   384 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   960 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =    64 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE = 92160 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   256 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   768 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =    64 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   256 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   320 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =     0 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE = 92032 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE = 91968 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   192 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  1024 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =    64 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   192 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   576 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =     0 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE = 84352 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   192 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   512 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =     0 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE = 92608 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE = 92544 KB
>> 
>> As mentioned in above log, when global dirty memory > global background_thresh
>> small cached data is also forced to flush by flush-8:16.
>> 
>> If removing global background_thresh checking code, we can reduce cache
>> thrashing of frequently used small data.
>  It's not completely clear to me:
>  Why is this a problem? Wearing of the flash? Power consumption? I'd like
>to understand this before changing the code...
>
>> And It will be great if we can reserve a portion of writeback cache using
>> min_ratio.
>> 
>> After applying patch:
>> $ echo 5 > /sys/block/sdb/bdi/min_ratio
>> $ cat /sys/block/sdb/bdi/min_ratio
>> 5
>> 
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  56064 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  56704 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  84160 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  96960 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  94080 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  93120 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  93120 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  91520 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  89600 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  93696 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  93696 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  72960 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  90624 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  90624 KB
>> [over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  90688 KB
>> 
>> As mentioned in the above logs, once cache is reserved for Process B,
>> and patch is applied there is less writeback cache thrashing on sdb
>> by frequent forced writeback by flush-8:16 in over_bground_thresh.
>> 
>> After all, small cached data will be flushed by periodic writeback
>> once every dirty_writeback_interval.
>  OK, in principle something like this makes sence to me. But if there are
>more BDIs which are roughly equally used, it could happen none of them are
>over threshold due to percpu counter & rounding errors. So I'd rather
>change the conditions to something like:
>	reclaimable = bdi_stat(bdi, BDI_RECLAIMABLE);
>	bdi_bground_thresh = bdi_dirty_limit(bdi, background_thresh);
>
>  	if (reclaimable > bdi_bground_thresh)
>		return true;
>	/*
>	 * If global background limit is exceeded, kick the writeback on
>	 * BDI if there's a reasonable amount of data to write (at least
>	 * 1/2 of BDI's background dirty limit).
>	 */
>	if (global_page_state(NR_FILE_DIRTY) +
>	    global_page_state(NR_UNSTABLE_NFS) > background_thresh &&
>	    reclaimable * 2 > bdi_bground_thresh)
>		return true;
>

Hi Jan,

If there are enough BDIs and percpu counter of each bdi roughly equally
used less than 1/2 of BDI's background dirty limit, still nothing will 
be flushed even if over global background_thresh.

Regards,
Wanpeng Li 

>								Honza
>
>> Suggested-by: Wanpeng Li <liwanp@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
>> Signed-off-by: Namjae Jeon <namjae.jeon@samsung.com>
>> Signed-off-by: Vivek Trivedi <t.vivek@samsung.com>
>> Cc: Fengguang Wu <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
>> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
>> Cc: Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com>
>> ---
>>  fs/fs-writeback.c |    4 ----
>>  1 file changed, 4 deletions(-)
>> 
>> diff --git a/fs/fs-writeback.c b/fs/fs-writeback.c
>> index 310972b..070b773 100644
>> --- a/fs/fs-writeback.c
>> +++ b/fs/fs-writeback.c
>> @@ -756,10 +756,6 @@ static bool over_bground_thresh(struct backing_dev_info *bdi)
>>  
>>  	global_dirty_limits(&background_thresh, &dirty_thresh);
>>  
>> -	if (global_page_state(NR_FILE_DIRTY) +
>> -	    global_page_state(NR_UNSTABLE_NFS) > background_thresh)
>> -		return true;
>> -
>>  	if (bdi_stat(bdi, BDI_RECLAIMABLE) >
>>  				bdi_dirty_limit(bdi, background_thresh))
>>  		return true;
>> -- 
>> 1.7.9.5
>> 
>-- 
>Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
>SUSE Labs, CR
>
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  reply	other threads:[~2013-01-01  0:51 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 20+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2012-12-30  5:59 [PATCH] writeback: fix writeback cache thrashing Namjae Jeon
2012-12-31 11:30 ` Jan Kara
2013-01-01  0:51   ` Wanpeng Li [this message]
2013-01-02 13:43     ` Jan Kara
2013-01-03  4:35       ` Namjae Jeon
2013-01-04  0:59         ` Simon Jeons
2013-01-04  7:41           ` Namjae Jeon
2013-01-05  0:46             ` Simon Jeons
2013-01-05  3:26               ` Fengguang Wu
2013-01-05  5:26                 ` Simon Jeons
2013-01-05  7:38                   ` Fengguang Wu
2013-01-05  9:41                     ` Simon Jeons
2013-01-05  9:55                       ` Fengguang Wu
2013-01-01  0:51   ` Wanpeng Li
2013-01-05  3:18 ` Fengguang Wu
2013-01-09  8:26   ` Namjae Jeon
2013-01-09 15:13     ` Jan Kara
2013-01-10  2:50       ` Wanpeng Li
2013-01-10  2:50       ` Wanpeng Li
2013-01-10 11:58       ` Namjae Jeon

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