From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from psmtp.com (na3sys010amx199.postini.com [74.125.245.199]) by kanga.kvack.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 159096B005D for ; Fri, 4 Jan 2013 22:26:46 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2013 11:26:42 +0800 From: Fengguang Wu Subject: Re: [PATCH] writeback: fix writeback cache thrashing Message-ID: <20130105032642.GA8188@localhost> References: <1356847190-7986-1-git-send-email-linkinjeon@gmail.com> <20121231113054.GC7564@quack.suse.cz> <20130102134334.GB30633@quack.suse.cz> <1357261151.5105.2.camel@kernel.cn.ibm.com> <1357346803.5273.10.camel@kernel.cn.ibm.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: <1357346803.5273.10.camel@kernel.cn.ibm.com> Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org List-ID: To: Simon Jeons Cc: Namjae Jeon , Jan Kara , Wanpeng Li , linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Namjae Jeon , Vivek Trivedi , Dave Chinner > > > Hi Namjae, > > > > > > Why use bdi_stat_error here? What's the meaning of its comment "maximal > > > error of a stat counter"? > > Hi Simon, > > > > As you know bdi stats (BDI_RECLAIMABLE, BDI_WRITEBACK a?|) are kept in > > percpu counters. > > When these percpu counters are incremented/decremented simultaneously > > on multiple CPUs by small amount (individual cpu counter less than > > threshold BDI_STAT_BATCH), > > it is possible that we get approximate value (not exact value) of > > these percpu counters. > > In order, to handle these percpu counter error we have used > > bdi_stat_error. bdi_stat_error is the maximum error which can happen > > in percpu bdi stats accounting. > > > > bdi_stat(bdi, BDI_RECLAIMABLE); > > -> This will give approximate value of BDI_RECLAIMABLE by reading > > previous value of percpu count. > > > > bdi_stat_sum(bdi, BDI_RECLAIMABLE); > > ->This will give exact value of BDI_RECLAIMABLE. It will take lock > > and add current percpu count of individual CPUs. > > It is not recommended to use it frequently as it is expensive. We > > can better use a??bdi_stata?? and work with approx value of bdi stats. > > > > Hi Namjae, thanks for your clarify. > > But why compare error stat count to bdi_bground_thresh? What's the It's not comparing bdi_stat_error to bdi_bground_thresh, but rather, in concept, comparing bdi_stat (with error bound adjustments) to bdi_bground_thresh. > relationship between them? I also see bdi_stat_error compare to > bdi_thresh/bdi_dirty in function balance_dirty_pages. Here, it's trying to use bdi_stat_sum(), the accurate (however more costly) version of bdi_stat(), if the error would possibly be large: if (bdi_thresh < 2 * bdi_stat_error(bdi)) { bdi_reclaimable = bdi_stat_sum(bdi, BDI_RECLAIMABLE); //... } else { bdi_reclaimable = bdi_stat(bdi, BDI_RECLAIMABLE); //... } Here the comment should have explained it well: * In theory 1 page is enough to keep the comsumer-producer * pipe going: the flusher cleans 1 page => the task dirties 1 * more page. However bdi_dirty has accounting errors. So use * the larger and more IO friendly bdi_stat_error. */ if (bdi_dirty <= bdi_stat_error(bdi)) break; Thanks, Fengguang -- 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/ . Don't email: email@kvack.org