Re: Slow I/O on USB media after commit f664a3cc17b7d0a2bc3b3ab96181e1029b0ec0e6

Andrea Vai
2019-11-11T10:46:16Z

Il giorno ven, 08/11/2019 alle 07.33 -0700, Jens Axboe ha scritto:
> On 11/8/19 1:42 AM, Damien Le Moal wrote:
> > On 2019/11/08 4:00, Andrea Vai wrote:
> >> [Sorry for the duplicate message, it didn't reach the lists due
> to
> >> html formatting]
> >> Il giorno gio 7 nov 2019 alle ore 08:54 Damien Le Moal
> >> <Damien.LeMoal@wdc.com> ha scritto:
> >>>
> >>> On 2019/11/07 16:04, Andrea Vai wrote:
> >>>> Il giorno mer, 06/11/2019 alle 22.13 +0000, Damien Le Moal ha
> scritto:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Please simply try your write tests after doing this:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> echo mq-deadline > /sys/block/<name of your USB
> >>>>> disk>/queue/scheduler
> >>>>>
> >>>>> And confirm that mq-deadline is selected with:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> cat /sys/block/<name of your USB disk>/queue/scheduler
> >>>>> [mq-deadline] kyber bfq none
> >>>>
> >>>> ok, which kernel should I test with this: the fresh git cloned,
> or the
> >>>> one just patched with Alan's patch, or doesn't matter which
> one?
> >>>
> >>> Probably all of them to see if there are any differences.
> >>
> >> with both kernels, the output of
> >> cat /sys/block/sdh/queue/schedule
> >>
> >> already contains [mq-deadline]: is it correct to assume that the
> echo
> >> command and the subsequent testing is useless? What to do now?
> >
> > Probably, yes. Have you obtained a blktrace of the workload during
> these
> > tests ? Any significant difference in the IO pattern (IO size and
> > randomness) and IO timing (any device idle time where the device
> has no
> > command to process) ? Asking because the problem may be above the
> block
> > layer, with the file system for instance.
>
> blktrace would indeed be super useful, especially if you can do that
> with a kernel that's fast for you, and one with the current kernel
> where it's slow.
>
> Given that your device is sdh, you simply do:
>
> # blktrace /dev/sdh
>
> and then run the test, then ctrl-c the blktrace. Then do:
>
> # blkparse sdh > output
>
> and save that output file. Do both runs, and bzip2 them up. The
> shorter
> the run you can reproduce with the better, to cut down on the size
> of
> the traces.

Sorry, the next message from Ming...

-----
You may get the IO pattern via the previous trace
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-usb/20190710024439.GA2621@ming.t460p/

IMO, if it is related write order, one possibility could be that
the queue lock is killed in .make_request_fn().
-----

...made me wonder if I should really do the blkparse trace test, or
not. So please confirm if it's needed (testing is quite time-consuming
, so I'd like to do it if it's needed).

Thanks, and bye,
Andrea