Re: [PATCH 3/6] writeback: sync expired inodes first in background writeback

Dave Chinner
2011-04-21T00:45:54Z

On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 10:53:21AM +0800, Wu Fengguang wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 09:21:20AM +0800, Dave Chinner wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 08:56:16PM +0800, Wu Fengguang wrote:
> > > I actually started with wb_writeback() as a natural choice, and then
> > > found it much easier to do the expired-only=>all-inodes switching in
> > > move_expired_inodes() since it needs to know the @b_dirty and @tmp
> > > lists' emptiness to trigger the switch. It's not sane for
> > > wb_writeback() to look into such details. And once you do the switch
> > > part in move_expired_inodes(), the whole policy naturally follows.
> >
> > Well, not really. You didn't need to modify move_expired_inodes() at
> > all to implement these changes - all you needed to do was modify how
> > older_than_this is configured.
> >
> > writeback policy is defined by the struct writeback_control.
> > move_expired_inodes() is pure mechanism. What you've done is remove
> > policy from the struct wbc and moved it to move_expired_inodes(),
> > which now defines both policy and mechanism.
>
> > Furhter, this means that all the tracing that uses the struct wbc no
> > no longer shows the entire writeback policy that is being worked on,
> > so we lose visibility into policy decisions that writeback is
> > making.
>
> Good point! I'm convinced, visibility is a necessity for debugging the
> complex writeback behaviors.
>
> > This same change is as simple as updating wbc->older_than_this
> > appropriately after the wb_writeback() call for both background and
> > kupdate and leaving the lower layers untouched. It's just a policy
> > change. If you thinkthe mechanism is inefficient, copy
> > wbc->older_than_this to a local variable inside
> > move_expired_inodes()....
>
> Do you like something like this? (details will change a bit when
> rearranging the patchset)

Yeah, this is close to what I had in mind.

>
> --- linux-next.orig/fs/fs-writeback.c 2011-04-20 10:30:47.000000000 +0800
> +++ linux-next/fs/fs-writeback.c 2011-04-20 10:40:19.000000000 +0800
> @@ -660,11 +660,6 @@ static long wb_writeback(struct bdi_writ
> long write_chunk;
> struct inode *inode;
>
> - if (wbc.for_kupdate) {
> - wbc.older_than_this = &oldest_jif;
> - oldest_jif = jiffies -
> - msecs_to_jiffies(dirty_expire_interval * 10);
> - }

Right here I'd do:

if (work->for_kupdate || work->for_background)
wbc.older_than_this = &oldest_jif;

so that the setting of wbc.older_than_this in the loop can trigger
on whether it is null or not.

> if (!wbc.range_cyclic) {
> wbc.range_start = 0;
> wbc.range_end = LLONG_MAX;
> @@ -713,10 +708,17 @@ static long wb_writeback(struct bdi_writ
> if (work->for_background && !over_bground_thresh())
> break;
>
> + if (work->for_kupdate || work->for_background) {
> + oldest_jif = jiffies -
> + msecs_to_jiffies(dirty_expire_interval * 10);
> + wbc.older_than_this = &oldest_jif;
> + }
> +

if you change that to:

if (wbc.older_than_this) {
*wbc.older_than_this = jiffies -
msecs_to_jiffies(dirty_expire_interval * 10);
}

> wbc.more_io = 0;
> wbc.nr_to_write = write_chunk;
> wbc.pages_skipped = 0;
>
> +retry_all:

You can get rid of this retry_all label and have the changeover in
behaviour re-initialise nr_to_write, etc.

> trace_wbc_writeback_start(&wbc, wb->bdi);
> if (work->sb)
> __writeback_inodes_sb(work->sb, wb, &wbc);
> @@ -733,6 +735,17 @@ static long wb_writeback(struct bdi_writ
> if (wbc.nr_to_write <= 0)
> continue;
> /*
> + * No expired inode? Try all fresh ones
> + */
> + if ((work->for_kupdate || work->for_background) &&
> + wbc.older_than_this &&
> + wbc.nr_to_write == write_chunk &&
> + list_empty(&wb->b_io) &&
> + list_empty(&wb->b_more_io)) {
> + wbc.older_than_this = NULL;
> + goto retry_all;
> + }

And here only do this for work->for_background as kupdate writeback
stops when we run out of expired inodes (i.e. it doesn't writeback
non-expired inodes).

Cheers,

Dave.
--
Dave Chinner
david@fromorbit.com