Re: Recent kernel "mount" slow

Jens Axboe
2012-11-27T12:34:52Z

On 2012-11-27 11:06, Jeff Chua wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 3:38 PM, Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> wrote:
>> On 2012-11-27 06:57, Jeff Chua wrote:
>>> On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 7:23 AM, Jeff Chua <jeff.chua.linux@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 5:09 AM, Mikulas Patocka <mpatocka@redhat.com> wrote:
>>>>> So it's better to slow down mount.
>>>>
>>>> I am quite proud of the linux boot time pitting against other OS. Even
>>>> with 10 partitions. Linux can boot up in just a few seconds, but now
>>>> you're saying that we need to do this semaphore check at boot up. By
>>>> doing so, it's inducing additional 4 seconds during boot up.
>>>
>>> By the way, I'm using a pretty fast SSD (Samsung PM830) and fast CPU
>>> (2.8GHz). I wonder if those on slower hard disk or slower CPU, what
>>> kind of degradation would this cause or just the same?
>>
>> It'd likely be the same slow down time wise, but as a percentage it
>> would appear smaller on a slower disk.
>>
>> Could you please test Mikulas' suggestion of changing
>> synchronize_sched() in include/linux/percpu-rwsem.h to
>> synchronize_sched_expedited()?
>
> Tested. It seems as fast as before, but may be a "tick" slower. Just
> perception. I was getting pretty much 0.012s with everything reverted.
> With synchronize_sched_expedited(), it seems to be 0.012s ~ 0.013s.
> So, it's good.

Excellent

>> linux-next also has a re-write of the per-cpu rw sems, out of Andrews
>> tree. It would be a good data point it you could test that, too.
>
> Tested. It's slower. 0.350s. But still faster than 0.500s without the patch.

Makes sense, it's 2 synchronize_sched() instead of 3. So it doesn't fix
the real issue, which is having to do synchronize_sched() in the first
place.

> # time mount /dev/sda1 /mnt; sync; sync; umount /mnt
>
>
> So, here's the comparison ...
>
> 0.500s 3.7.0-rc7
> 0.168s 3.7.0-rc2
> 0.012s 3.6.0
> 0.013s 3.7.0-rc7 + synchronize_sched_expedited()
> 0.350s 3.7.0-rc7 + Oleg's patch.

I wonder how many of them are due to changing to the same block size.
Does the below patch make a difference?

diff --git a/fs/block_dev.c b/fs/block_dev.c
index 1a1e5e3..f041c56 100644
--- a/fs/block_dev.c
+++ b/fs/block_dev.c
@@ -126,29 +126,28 @@ int set_blocksize(struct block_device *bdev, int size)
if (size < bdev_logical_block_size(bdev))
return -EINVAL;

- /* Prevent starting I/O or mapping the device */
- percpu_down_write(&bdev->bd_block_size_semaphore);
-
/* Check that the block device is not memory mapped */
mapping = bdev->bd_inode->i_mapping;
mutex_lock(&mapping->i_mmap_mutex);
if (mapping_mapped(mapping)) {
mutex_unlock(&mapping->i_mmap_mutex);
- percpu_up_write(&bdev->bd_block_size_semaphore);
return -EBUSY;
}
mutex_unlock(&mapping->i_mmap_mutex);

/* Don't change the size if it is same as current */
if (bdev->bd_block_size != size) {
- sync_blockdev(bdev);
- bdev->bd_block_size = size;
- bdev->bd_inode->i_blkbits = blksize_bits(size);
- kill_bdev(bdev);
+ /* Prevent starting I/O */
+ percpu_down_write(&bdev->bd_block_size_semaphore);
+ if (bdev->bd_block_size != size) {
+ sync_blockdev(bdev);
+ bdev->bd_block_size = size;
+ bdev->bd_inode->i_blkbits = blksize_bits(size);
+ kill_bdev(bdev);
+ }
+ percpu_up_write(&bdev->bd_block_size_semaphore);
}

- percpu_up_write(&bdev->bd_block_size_semaphore);
-
return 0;
}

@@ -1649,14 +1648,12 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(blkdev_aio_write);

static int blkdev_mmap(struct file *file, struct vm_area_struct *vma)
{
+ struct address_space *mapping = file->f_mapping;
int ret;
- struct block_device *bdev = I_BDEV(file->f_mapping->host);
-
- percpu_down_read(&bdev->bd_block_size_semaphore);

+ mutex_lock(&mapping->i_mmap_mutex);
ret = generic_file_mmap(file, vma);
-
- percpu_up_read(&bdev->bd_block_size_semaphore);
+ mutex_unlock(&mapping->i_mmap_mutex);

return ret;
}

--
Jens Axboe