Re: [PATCH 9/9] libxfs: keep unflushable buffers off the cache MRUs

Brian Foster
2016-01-05T18:34:20Z

On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 08:37:09AM +1100, Dave Chinner wrote:
> From: Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com>
>
> There's no point trying to free buffers that are dirty and return
> errors on flush as we have to keep them around until the corruption
> is fixed. Hence if we fail to flush an inode during a cache shake,
> move the buffer to a special dirty MRU list that the cache does not
> shake. This prevents memory pressure from seeing these buffers, but
> allows subsequent cache lookups to still find them through the hash.
> This ensures we don't waste huge amounts of CPU trying to flush and
> reclaim buffers that canot be flushed or reclaimed.
>
> Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com>
> ---
> include/cache.h | 3 ++-
> libxfs/cache.c | 34 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-----
> 2 files changed, 31 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
>
...
> diff --git a/libxfs/cache.c b/libxfs/cache.c
> index a48ebd9..d5ea461 100644
> --- a/libxfs/cache.c
> +++ b/libxfs/cache.c
...
> @@ -202,10 +223,11 @@ cache_shake(
> struct cache_node * node;
> unsigned int count;
>
> - ASSERT(priority <= CACHE_MAX_PRIORITY);
> - if (priority > CACHE_MAX_PRIORITY)
> + ASSERT(priority <= CACHE_DIRTY_PRIORITY);
> + if (priority > CACHE_MAX_PRIORITY && !all)
> priority = 0;
>
> +

Extra newline. FWIW, it also looks like the only cache_shake() caller
where all == 0 already prevents calling with priority >
CACHE_MAX_PRIORITY. I think a brief comment in one or both places with
regard to why >max priority is skipped unless 'all == 1' would be good,
though.

Also, it looks like the loop in cache_report() could be updated to dump
the dirty priority mru entry count.

Finally, what happens once a buffer on the dirty mru is fully repaired,
rewritten and released? Is it placed right back on the "unshakeable"
dirty mru or is cn_priority updated somewhere? On further digging, it
looks like a subsequent buffer lookup (__cache_lookup()) drops the
priority, though it appears to be designed to deal with prefetched
buffers and the associated B_INODE..B_DIR_BMAP mappings.

Brian

> mru = &cache->c_mrus[priority];
> count = 0;
> list_head_init(&temp);
> @@ -221,6 +243,8 @@ cache_shake(
>
> /* can't release dirty objects */
> if (cache->flush(node)) {
> + cache_move_to_dirty_mru(cache, node);
> + mru->cm_count--;
> pthread_mutex_unlock(&node->cn_mutex);
> continue;
> }
> @@ -578,7 +602,7 @@ cache_purge(
> {
> int i;
>
> - for (i = 0; i <= CACHE_MAX_PRIORITY; i++)
> + for (i = 0; i <= CACHE_DIRTY_PRIORITY; i++)
> cache_shake(cache, i, 1);
>
> #ifdef CACHE_DEBUG
> --
> 2.5.0
>
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