Re: [PATCH 16/26] xfs: synchronous AIL pushing

Brian Foster
2019-10-12T12:08:39Z

On Sat, Oct 12, 2019 at 10:27:16AM +1100, Dave Chinner wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 11:29:45AM -0400, Brian Foster wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 03:18:25AM -0700, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > > On Wed, Oct 09, 2019 at 02:21:14PM +1100, Dave Chinner wrote:
> > > > Factor the common AIL deletion code that does all the wakeups into a
> > > > helper so we only have one copy of this somewhat tricky code to
> > > > interface with all the wakeups necessary when the LSN of the log
> > > > tail changes.
> > > >
> > > > xfs_ail_push_sync() is temporary infrastructure to facilitate
> > > > non-blocking, IO-less inode reclaim throttling that allows further
> > > > structural changes to be made. Once those structural changes are
> > > > made, the need for this function goes away and it is removed,
> > > > leaving us with only the xfs_ail_update_finish() factoring when this
> > > > is all done.
> > >
> > > The xfs_ail_update_finish work here is in an earlier patch, so the
> > > changelog will need some updates.
> > >
> > > > + spin_lock(&ailp->ail_lock);
> > > > + while ((lip = xfs_ail_min(ailp)) != NULL) {
> > > > + prepare_to_wait(&ailp->ail_push, &wait, TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE);
> > > > + if (XFS_FORCED_SHUTDOWN(ailp->ail_mount) ||
> > > > + XFS_LSN_CMP(threshold_lsn, lip->li_lsn) <= 0)
> >
> > Wasn't this supposed to change to < 0? The rfc series had that logic,
> > but it changed from <= to < later in the wrong patch.
>
> I probably forgot because this code gets removed at the end of the
> series. Hence I haven't cared about exact correctness of neatness
> as it's just temporary scaffolding to keep stuff from breaking
> horribly as the changeover to non-blocking algorithms is done.
>
> It works well enough that I can't break it as it stands - I've
> tested each patch individually with both load and fstests, and so
> this code as it stands doesn't introduce any bisect landmines - it
> prevents a bunch of problems in OOM conditions by retaining the
> blocking behaviour of reclaim until we no longer need it...
>

Ok, I guess I forgot that this was temporary. FWIW, I think it's worth
fixing the small things like this comparison and the couple things
Christoph points out, if nothing else to facilitate review. Disregard
the larger refactoring feedback..

Brian

> > > > + break;
> > > > + /* XXX: cmpxchg? */
> > > > + while (XFS_LSN_CMP(threshold_lsn, ailp->ail_target) > 0)
> > > > + xfs_trans_ail_copy_lsn(ailp, &ailp->ail_target, &threshold_lsn);
> > >
> > > This code looks broken on 32-bit given that xfs_trans_ail_copy_lsn takes
> > > the ail_lock there. Just replacing the xfs_trans_ail_copy_lsn call with
> > > a direct assignment would fix that, no need for cmpxchg either as far
> > > as I can tell (and it would fix that too long line as well).
>
> Oh, right. I'll fix that.
>
> > > still looks odd, I think this should simply be an if.
> > >
> > > > + wake_up_process(ailp->ail_task);
> > > > + spin_unlock(&ailp->ail_lock);
> > >
> > > xfsaild will take ail_lock pretty quickly. I think we should drop
> > > the lock before waking it.
> >
> > Can't we replace this whole thing with something that repurposes
> > xfs_ail_push_all_sync()? That only requires some tweaks to the existing
> > function and the new _push_all_sync() wrapper ends up looking something
> > like:
> >
> > while ((threshold_lsn = xfs_ail_max_lsn(ailp)) != 0)
> > xfs_ail_push_sync(ailp, threshold_lsn);
> >
> > There's an extra lock cycle, but that's still only on tail updates. That
> > doesn't seem unreasonable to me for the usage of _push_all_sync().
>
> The whole thing goes away, so there is zero point in trying to
> optimise or perfect this code. It's temporary code, treat it as
> such.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Dave.
> --
> Dave Chinner
> david@fromorbit.com