From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756678Ab0JKWBg (ORCPT ); Mon, 11 Oct 2010 18:01:36 -0400 Received: from e32.co.us.ibm.com ([32.97.110.150]:37834 "EHLO e32.co.us.ibm.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756416Ab0JKWBf (ORCPT ); Mon, 11 Oct 2010 18:01:35 -0400 Subject: Re: [RFC][PATCH] try not to let dirty inodes fester From: Dave Hansen To: Christoph Hellwig Cc: Dave Chinner , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, hch@infradead.org, lnxninja@linux.vnet.ibm.com, axboe@kernel.dk, pbadari@us.ibm.com, Yuri L Volobuev In-Reply-To: <20101005153604.GA25228@lst.de> References: <20101001191449.0AA0E233@kernel.beaverton.ibm.com> <20101002113238.GF4681@dastard> <1286292345.9970.4231.camel@nimitz> <20101005153604.GA25228@lst.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ANSI_X3.4-1968" Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2010 15:01:30 -0700 Message-ID: <1286834490.20322.8.camel@nimitz> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.28.1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Dave, Christoph, Thanks again for looking at this. It turned out not to be dirty data at all that was causing this. It was dispose_list() taking extraordinarily long to complete. There were cases where it was taking 2 or 3 minutes per batch of ~75 inodes. This was all due to the underlying filesystem (GPFS) taking a couple of seconds for each clear_inode(). This kept the kernel from being able to do any slab reclaim effectively. Sorry for the noise. -- Dave