Re: [PATCH 17/32] scsi/ibmvstgt: use system_wq instead of vtgtd workqueue

[Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>]

Hello,

On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 05:09:18PM +0100, Bart Van Assche wrote:
> Insertion of  flush_work_sync() fixes a race - that's a good catch.
> flush_work_sync() should be invoked a little earlier though because
> the scheduled work may access the queue destroyed by the
> crq_queue_destroy(target) call. And the CRQ interrupt should be
> disabled from before flush_work_sync() is invoked until after the CRQ
> has been destroyed.

Heh, I'm a bit out of my depth here.  If you know what's necessary,
please go ahead and make the change.

> Regarding the queue removal: I might have missed something, but why
> would you like to remove the vtgtd work queue ? Since the ibmvstgt
> driver is a storage target driver, processing latency matters. I'm
> afraid that switching from a dedicated queue to the global work queue
> will increase processing latency.

Having a dedicated workqueue no longer makes any difference regarding
processing latency.  Each workqueue is mere frontend to the shared
worker pool anyway.  Dedicated workqueues are now meaningful only as
forward progress guarantee, attribute and/or flush domain - IOW, when
the workqueue needs to be used during memory reclaim, the work items
need to have specific attributes or certain group of work items need
to be flushed together.  Apart from that, there's virtually no
difference between using the system_wq and a dedicated one.  As using
the system one is usually simpler, it's natural to do that.

Thank you.

-- 
tejun