Re: [PATCH 04/10] xfs: implement freezing by emptying the AIL

Dave Chinner
2012-04-13T10:04:13Z

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 12:44:04PM -0400, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> Now that we write back all metadata either synchronously or through the AIL
> we can simply implement metadata freezing in terms of emptying the AIL.
>
> The implementation for this is fairly simply and straight-forward: A new
> routine is added that increments a counter that tells xfsaild to not stop
> until the AIL is empty and then waits on a wakeup from
> xfs_trans_ail_delete_bulk to signal that the AIL is empty.
>
> As usual the devil is in the details, in this case the filesystem shutdown
> code. Currently we are a bit sloppy there and do not continue ail pushing
> in that case, and thus never reach the code in the log item implementations
> that can unwind in case of a shutdown filesystem. Also the code to
> abort inode and dquot flushes was rather sloppy before and did not remove
> the log items from the AIL, which had to be fixed as well.

Probably don't need this bit in the commit message - the previous
commits kind of explain the reason....

> Also treat unmount the same way as freeze now, except that we still keep a
> synchronous inode reclaim pass to make sure we reclaim all clean inodes, too.

Actaully, I think we need an inode reclaim pass when freezing, too,
otherwise the shrinker or background reclaim will get stuck trying
to reclaim them.

.....

> -STATIC void
> -xfs_quiesce_fs(
> - struct xfs_mount *mp)
> -{
> - int count = 0, pincount;
> -
> - xfs_reclaim_inodes(mp, 0);
> - xfs_flush_buftarg(mp->m_ddev_targp, 0);

here's where we used to do inode reclaim during a freeze...

....
> @@ -421,8 +342,8 @@ xfs_quiesce_attr(
> while (atomic_read(&mp->m_active_trans) > 0)
> delay(100);
>
> - /* flush inodes and push all remaining buffers out to disk */
> - xfs_quiesce_fs(mp);
> + /* flush all pending changes from the AIL */
> + xfs_ail_push_all_sync(mp->m_ail);

and now that doesn't happen. I think we still need the reclaim pass
here...

> @@ -397,6 +396,15 @@ xfsaild_push(
> XFS_STATS_INC(xs_push_ail);
>
> /*
> + * If we are draining the AIL push all items, not just the current
> + * threshold.
> + */
> + if (atomic_read(&ailp->xa_wait_empty))
> + target = xfs_ail_max(ailp)->li_lsn;
> + else
> + target = ailp->xa_target;
> +

I'm not sure this is the best way to do this. Effectively you've
implemented xfs_ail_push_all() differently, and added a new counter
to do it.

....
> @@ -611,6 +614,34 @@ xfs_ail_push_all(
> }
>
> /*
> + * Push out all items in the AIL immediately and wait until the AIL is empty.
> + */
> +void
> +xfs_ail_push_all_sync(
> + struct xfs_ail *ailp)
> +{
> + DEFINE_WAIT(wait);
> +
> + /*
> + * We use a counter instead of a flag here to support multiple
> + * processes calling into sync at the same time.
> + */
> + atomic_inc(&ailp->xa_wait_empty);

if we just set the target here appropriately, we don't need the
atomic counter, just:

do {
prepare_to_wait()
ailp->xa_target = xfs_ail_max(ailp)->li_lsn;
wake_up_process(ailp->xa_task);
if (!xfs_ail_min_lsn(ailp))
break;
schedule();
} while (xfs_ail_min_lsn(ailp));

All the other changes look OK.
--
Dave Chinner
david@fromorbit.com