Re: [PATCH/RFC] mm: don't cap request size based on read-ahead setting

[Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>]

On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 03:41:58PM -0700, Jens Axboe wrote:
> On 11/15/2016 03:27 PM, Johannes Weiner wrote:
> > Hi Jens,
> > 
> > On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 10:00:37AM -0700, Jens Axboe wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > We ran into a funky issue, where someone doing 256K buffered reads saw
> > > 128K requests at the device level. Turns out it is read-ahead capping
> > > the request size, since we use 128K as the default setting. This doesn't
> > > make a lot of sense - if someone is issuing 256K reads, they should see
> > > 256K reads, regardless of the read-ahead setting.
> > > 
> > > To make matters more confusing, there's an odd interaction with the
> > > fadvise hint setting. If we tell the kernel we're doing sequential IO on
> > > this file descriptor, we can get twice the read-ahead size. But if we
> > > tell the kernel that we are doing random IO, hence disabling read-ahead,
> > > we do get nice 256K requests at the lower level. An application
> > > developer will be, rightfully, scratching his head at this point,
> > > wondering wtf is going on. A good one will dive into the kernel source,
> > > and silently weep.
> > > 
> > > This patch introduces a bdi hint, io_pages. This is the soft max IO size
> > > for the lower level, I've hooked it up to the bdev settings here.
> > > Read-ahead is modified to issue the maximum of the user request size,
> > > and the read-ahead max size, but capped to the max request size on the
> > > device side. The latter is done to avoid reading ahead too much, if the
> > > application asks for a huge read. With this patch, the kernel behaves
> > > like the application expects.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > diff --git a/block/blk-settings.c b/block/blk-settings.c
> > > index f679ae122843..65f16cf4f850 100644
> > > --- a/block/blk-settings.c
> > > +++ b/block/blk-settings.c
> > > @@ -249,6 +249,7 @@ void blk_queue_max_hw_sectors(struct request_queue *q,
> > > unsigned int max_hw_secto
> > >  	max_sectors = min_not_zero(max_hw_sectors, limits->max_dev_sectors);
> > >  	max_sectors = min_t(unsigned int, max_sectors, BLK_DEF_MAX_SECTORS);
> > >  	limits->max_sectors = max_sectors;
> > > +	q->backing_dev_info.io_pages = max_sectors >> (PAGE_SHIFT - 9);
> > 
> > Could we simply set q->backing_dev_info.ra_pages here? This would
> > start the disk out with a less magical readahead setting than the
> > current 128k default, while retaining the ability for the user to
> > override it in sysfs later on. Plus, one less attribute to juggle.
> 
> We could, but then we'd have two places that tweak the same knob. I
> think it's perfectly valid to have the read-ahead size be bigger than
> the max request size, if you want some pipelining, for instance.

I'm not sure I follow. Which would be the two places and which knob?

What I meant how it could work is this: when the queue gets allocated,
we set ra_pages to the hard-coded 128K, like we do right now. When the
driver initializes and calls blk_queue_max_hw_sectors() it would set
ra_pages to the more informed, device-optimized max_sectors >>
(PAGE_SHIFT - 9). And once it's all initialized, the user can still
make adjustments to the default we picked in the kernel heuristic.

> The 128k default is silly, though, that should be smarter. It should
> probably default to the max request size.

Could you clarify the difference between max request size and what
blk_queue_max_hw_sectors() sets? The way I understood your patch is
that we want to use a readahead cap that's better suited to the
underlying IO device than the magic 128K. What am I missing?

> > > @@ -369,10 +369,18 @@ ondemand_readahead(struct address_space *mapping,
> > >  		   bool hit_readahead_marker, pgoff_t offset,
> > >  		   unsigned long req_size)
> > >  {
> > > -	unsigned long max = ra->ra_pages;
> > > +	unsigned long max_pages;
> > >  	pgoff_t prev_offset;
> > > 
> > >  	/*
> > > +	 * Use the max of the read-ahead pages setting and the requested IO
> > > +	 * size, and then the min of that and the soft IO size for the
> > > +	 * underlying device.
> > > +	 */
> > > +	max_pages = max_t(unsigned long, ra->ra_pages, req_size);
> > > +	max_pages = min_not_zero(inode_to_bdi(mapping->host)->io_pages, max_pages);
> > 
> > This code would then go away, and it would apply the benefit of this
> > patch automatically to explicit readahead(2) and FADV_WILLNEED calls
> > going through force_page_cache_readahead() as well.
> 
> The path from the force actually works, which is why you get the weird
> behavior with a file marked as RANDOM getting the full request size, and
> not being limited by ra_pages.

How so? do_generic_file_read() calls page_cache_sync_readahead(), and
if the file is marked random it goes to force_page_cache_readahead():

void page_cache_sync_readahead(struct address_space *mapping,
			       struct file_ra_state *ra, struct file *filp,
			       pgoff_t offset, unsigned long req_size)
{
	/* no read-ahead */
	if (!ra->ra_pages)
		return;

	/* be dumb */
	if (filp && (filp->f_mode & FMODE_RANDOM)) {
		force_page_cache_readahead(mapping, filp, offset, req_size);
		return;
	}

	/* do read-ahead */
	ondemand_readahead(mapping, ra, filp, false, offset, req_size);
}

That function in turn still caps the reads to the default 128K ra_pages:

int force_page_cache_readahead(struct address_space *mapping, struct file *filp,
		pgoff_t offset, unsigned long nr_to_read)
{
	if (unlikely(!mapping->a_ops->readpage && !mapping->a_ops->readpages))
		return -EINVAL;

	nr_to_read = min(nr_to_read, inode_to_bdi(mapping->host)->ra_pages);
	while (nr_to_read) {
		int err;

		unsigned long this_chunk = (2 * 1024 * 1024) / PAGE_SIZE;

		if (this_chunk > nr_to_read)
			this_chunk = nr_to_read;
		err = __do_page_cache_readahead(mapping, filp,
						offset, this_chunk, 0);
		if (err < 0)
			return err;

		offset += this_chunk;
		nr_to_read -= this_chunk;
	}
	return 0;
}

How could you get IO requests bigger than the 128k ra_pages there?

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