Re: long hangs when deleting large directories (3.0-rc3)

Markus Trippelsdorf
2011-06-22T07:06:54Z

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 6613 bytes --]

On 2011.06.22 at 10:04 +1000, Dave Chinner wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 08:57:01PM +0200, Markus Trippelsdorf wrote:
> > On 2011.06.21 at 20:24 +0200, Markus Trippelsdorf wrote:
> > > On 2011.06.21 at 10:02 +0200, Markus Trippelsdorf wrote:
> > > > On 2011.06.21 at 14:25 +1000, Dave Chinner wrote:
> > > > > That is, you really need to get a profile of the rm -rf process - or
> > > > > whatever is consuming the CPU time - (e.g. via perf or ftrace)
> > > > > across the hang to so we can narrow down the potential cause of the
> > > > > latency. Speaking of which, latencytop might be helpful in
> > > > > identifying where input is getting held up....
> > > >
> > > > I've recorded a profile with "perf record -g /home/markus/rm_sync"
> > > > ~ % cat rm_sync
> > > > rm -fr /mnt/tmp/tmp/linux && sync
> > >
> > > FWIW here are two links to svg time-charts produced by:
> > >
> > > perf timechart record /home/markus/rm_sync
> > >
> > > http://trippelsdorf.de/timechart1.svg
> > > http://trippelsdorf.de/timechart2.svg
> > >
> >
> > And this is what the mysterious kworker is doing during the sync.
> > It's the one consuming most of the CPU time.
> >
> > 39.96% kworker/3:0 [kernel.kallsyms] 0xffffffff811da9da k [k] xfs_trans_ail_update_bulk
> > |
> > --- xfs_trans_ail_update_bulk
> > xfs_trans_committed_bulk
> > xlog_cil_committed
> > xlog_state_do_callback
> > xlog_state_done_syncing
> > xlog_iodone
> > xfs_buf_iodone_work
> > process_one_work
> > worker_thread
> > kthread
> > kernel_thread_helper
>
> So that is inserting items into the AIL at transaction completion.
> That can consume lots of CPU time if the CIL checkpoints are being
> flushed quickly enough. Given you are doing a rm -rf at this point
> in time, I'd expect to see this trace present in the profile, though
> maybe not at that extent.
>
> I have seen this before but have never been able to it reproduce
> reliably. If checkpoints are completed "out of order" due to the
> way the commit records are written into the iclogs. This can cause
> extra CPU because the AIL insertion then has to skip over all the
> items that were inserted out of order before splicing each group of
> items into the AIL. I only rarely see this (maybe once every couple
> of weeks of performance testing), so I'm not sure it's the problem
> you are seeing.
>
> Adding this debug to xfs_ail_splice() list walk will tell us if this is
> happening and how many items it had to walk when you see a hang:
>
> xfs_lsn_t lsn)
> {
> xfs_log_item_t *next_lip;
> + int walked = 0;
>
> /* If the list is empty, just insert the item. */
> if (list_empty(&ailp->xa_ail)) {
> list_splice(list, &ailp->xa_ail);
> return;
> }
>
> list_for_each_entry_reverse(next_lip, &ailp->xa_ail, li_ail) {
> if (XFS_LSN_CMP(next_lip->li_lsn, lsn) <= 0)
> break;
> + if (!walked++) {
> + xfs_warn(ailp->xa_mount,
> + "ail: ooo splice, tail 0x%llx, item 0x%llx\n",
> + next_lip->li_lsn, lsn);
> + }
> }
> + if (walked > 10) {
> + xfs_warn(ailp->xa_mount,
> + "ail: ooo splice, walked %d items\n", walked);
> + }
>
> ASSERT(&next_lip->li_ail == &ailp->xa_ail ||
> XFS_LSN_CMP(next_lip->li_lsn, lsn) <= 0);
>
> That will at least tell us if this is the cause of your problem. If
> it is, I think I know how to avoid most of the list walk overhead
> fairly easily and that should avoid the need to change workqueue
> configurations at all.

The kernel log is attached.

> > The following patch fixes the problem for me.
> >
> > diff --git a/fs/xfs/linux-2.6/xfs_buf.c b/fs/xfs/linux-2.6/xfs_buf.c
> > index 5e68099..2f34efd 100644
> > --- a/fs/xfs/linux-2.6/xfs_buf.c
> > +++ b/fs/xfs/linux-2.6/xfs_buf.c
> > @@ -1856,7 +1856,7 @@ xfs_buf_init(void)
> > goto out;
> >
> > xfslogd_workqueue = alloc_workqueue("xfslogd",
> > - WQ_MEM_RECLAIM | WQ_HIGHPRI, 1);
> > + WQ_MEM_RECLAIM | WQ_UNBOUND, 1);
> > if (!xfslogd_workqueue)
> > goto out_free_buf_zone;
>
> That implies the source of your X/ssh hangs is a workqueue priority
> inversion.
>
> We need the xfslogd to run with WQ_HIGHPRI because we can deadlock
> in IO completion if it is blocked by xfsdatad/xfsconvertd wq
> operations. Hence we need to process the logd workqueue ahead of
> data IO completions and we do that by making the log IO completion
> high priority.
>
> This thing is, the CMWQ infrastructure only has one level of "high
> priority" - we can't define any other sort of dependency between
> various queues - and that queue is simply a FIFO. IOWs, CMWQ will
> process anything that is high priority ahead of -all- other normal
> priority work items. That means that if you get a high priority
> workqueue with lots to do and consuming CPU (as we are seeing here)
> it will starve all other work items that are queued on that CPU.
>
> So what you end up seeing is interactive process related work being
> queued on CPU 3 which is then being starved of processing by XFS IO
> completion work on the same CPU. By setting the xfslogd workqueue to
> unbound, it no longer holds precedence over any of the other work
> and hence does not starve the queued interactive process related work.
> That's why the patch "fixes" your 1-2s hangs while log IO is in
> progress, but it will eventually deadlock and hang the filesystem
> permanently.
>
> There are two different things you can try with the wq
> initialisation that might help prevent the problem. Firstly, try
> this:
>
> - WQ_MEM_RECLAIM | WQ_HIGHPRI, 1);
> + WQ_MEM_RECLAIM | WQ_HIGHPRI, 8);
>
> To change the number of concurrent per-cpu work items that can be
> processed on the work queue. I don't think that will fix the
> inversion, but it may allow more concurrency which hides the
> inversion.
>
> The other thing you can try is:
>
> - WQ_MEM_RECLAIM | WQ_HIGHPRI, 1);
> + WQ_MEM_RECLAIM | WQ_HIGHPRI | WQ_CPU_INTENSIVE, 1);
>
> Which marks the workqueue as one that will consume a lot of CPU and
> hence it is scheduled differently and hence should avoid other
> pending work from being starved. We use this WQ_CPU_INTENSIVE flag
> on other XFS workqueues that are known to consume lots of CPU, so I
> suspect this is the right thing to do here.

Yes, that was the next combination I've tested after WQ_UNBOUND and it
solves the issue, too.

--
Markus

[-- Attachment #2: kern.log.bz2 --]
[-- Type: application/x-bzip2, Size: 4328 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #3: Type: text/plain, Size: 121 bytes --]