[PATCH 2/2] Deprecate NR_UNSTABLE_NFS, use NR_WRITEBACK

NeilBrown
2020-04-01T23:54:18Z

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After an NFS page has been written it is considered "unstable" until a
COMMIT request succeeds. If the COMMIT fails, the page will be
re-written.

These "unstable" pages are currently accounted as "reclaimable",
either in WB_RECLAIMABLE, or in NR_UNSTABLE_NFS which is included in a
'reclaimable' count. This might have made sense when sending the COMMIT
required a separate action by the VFS/MM (e.g. releasepage() used to
send a COMMIT). However now that all writes generated by ->writepages()
will automatically be followed by a COMMIT, it makes more sense to
treat them as writeback pages.

So this page deprecates NR_UNSTABLE_NFS and accounts unstable pages in
NR_WRITEBACK and WB_WRITEBACK.

A particular effect of this change is that when
wb_check_background_flush() calls wb_over_bg_threshold(), the latter
will report 'true' a lot less often as the 'unstable' pages are no
longer considered 'dirty' (and there is nothing that writeback can do
about them anyway).

Currently wb_check_background_flush() will trigger writeback to NFS even
when there are relatively few dirty pages (if there are lots of unstable
pages), this can result in small writes going to the server (10s of
Kilobytes rather than a Megabyte) which hurts throughput.
With this that, there are fewer writes which are each larger on average.

Signed-off-by: NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de>
---
fs/fs-writeback.c | 1 -
fs/nfs/internal.h | 7 +++++--
fs/nfs/write.c | 4 ++--
include/linux/mmzone.h | 2 +-
mm/memcontrol.c | 1 -
mm/page-writeback.c | 7 ++-----
6 files changed, 10 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)

diff --git a/fs/fs-writeback.c b/fs/fs-writeback.c
index 76ac9c7d32ec..c5bdf46e3b4b 100644
--- a/fs/fs-writeback.c
+++ b/fs/fs-writeback.c
@@ -1070,7 +1070,6 @@ static void bdi_split_work_to_wbs(struct backing_dev_info *bdi,
static unsigned long get_nr_dirty_pages(void)
{
return global_node_page_state(NR_FILE_DIRTY) +
- global_node_page_state(NR_UNSTABLE_NFS) +
get_nr_dirty_inodes();
}

diff --git a/fs/nfs/internal.h b/fs/nfs/internal.h
index f80c47d5ff27..ba1ff5adeccd 100644
--- a/fs/nfs/internal.h
+++ b/fs/nfs/internal.h
@@ -660,8 +660,11 @@ void nfs_mark_page_unstable(struct page *page, struct nfs_commit_info *cinfo)
if (!cinfo->dreq) {
struct inode *inode = page_file_mapping(page)->host;

- inc_node_page_state(page, NR_UNSTABLE_NFS);
- inc_wb_stat(&inode_to_bdi(inode)->wb, WB_RECLAIMABLE);
+ /* This page is really still in write-back - just that the
+ * writeback is happening on the server now.
+ */
+ inc_node_page_state(page, NR_WRITEBACK);
+ inc_wb_stat(&inode_to_bdi(inode)->wb, WB_WRITEBACK);
__mark_inode_dirty(inode, I_DIRTY_DATASYNC);
}
}
diff --git a/fs/nfs/write.c b/fs/nfs/write.c
index c478b772cc49..2e15a56620b3 100644
--- a/fs/nfs/write.c
+++ b/fs/nfs/write.c
@@ -958,9 +958,9 @@ nfs_mark_request_commit(struct nfs_page *req, struct pnfs_layout_segment *lseg,
static void
nfs_clear_page_commit(struct page *page)
{
- dec_node_page_state(page, NR_UNSTABLE_NFS);
+ dec_node_page_state(page, NR_WRITEBACK);
dec_wb_stat(&inode_to_bdi(page_file_mapping(page)->host)->wb,
- WB_RECLAIMABLE);
+ WB_WRITEBACK);
}

/* Called holding the request lock on @req */
diff --git a/include/linux/mmzone.h b/include/linux/mmzone.h
index 462f6873905a..227fcb8cd0e6 100644
--- a/include/linux/mmzone.h
+++ b/include/linux/mmzone.h
@@ -237,7 +237,7 @@ enum node_stat_item {
NR_FILE_THPS,
NR_FILE_PMDMAPPED,
NR_ANON_THPS,
- NR_UNSTABLE_NFS, /* NFS unstable pages */
+ NR_UNSTABLE_NFS, /* NFS unstable pages - DEPRECATED DO NOT USE */
NR_VMSCAN_WRITE,
NR_VMSCAN_IMMEDIATE, /* Prioritise for reclaim when writeback ends */
NR_DIRTIED, /* page dirtyings since bootup */
diff --git a/mm/memcontrol.c b/mm/memcontrol.c
index 7ddf91c4295f..fad8e8a23235 100644
--- a/mm/memcontrol.c
+++ b/mm/memcontrol.c
@@ -4317,7 +4317,6 @@ void mem_cgroup_wb_stats(struct bdi_writeback *wb, unsigned long *pfilepages,

*pdirty = memcg_exact_page_state(memcg, NR_FILE_DIRTY);

- /* this should eventually include NR_UNSTABLE_NFS */
*pwriteback = memcg_exact_page_state(memcg, NR_WRITEBACK);
*pfilepages = memcg_exact_page_state(memcg, NR_INACTIVE_FILE) +
memcg_exact_page_state(memcg, NR_ACTIVE_FILE);
diff --git a/mm/page-writeback.c b/mm/page-writeback.c
index 2afb09fa2fe0..d1f03c799d11 100644
--- a/mm/page-writeback.c
+++ b/mm/page-writeback.c
@@ -504,7 +504,6 @@ bool node_dirty_ok(struct pglist_data *pgdat)
unsigned long nr_pages = 0;

nr_pages += node_page_state(pgdat, NR_FILE_DIRTY);
- nr_pages += node_page_state(pgdat, NR_UNSTABLE_NFS);
nr_pages += node_page_state(pgdat, NR_WRITEBACK);

return nr_pages <= limit;
@@ -1595,8 +1594,7 @@ static void balance_dirty_pages(struct bdi_writeback *wb,
* written to the server's write cache, but has not yet
* been flushed to permanent storage.
*/
- nr_reclaimable = global_node_page_state(NR_FILE_DIRTY) +
- global_node_page_state(NR_UNSTABLE_NFS);
+ nr_reclaimable = global_node_page_state(NR_FILE_DIRTY);
gdtc->avail = global_dirtyable_memory();
gdtc->dirty = nr_reclaimable + global_node_page_state(NR_WRITEBACK);

@@ -1940,8 +1938,7 @@ bool wb_over_bg_thresh(struct bdi_writeback *wb)
* as we're trying to decide whether to put more under writeback.
*/
gdtc->avail = global_dirtyable_memory();
- gdtc->dirty = global_node_page_state(NR_FILE_DIRTY) +
- global_node_page_state(NR_UNSTABLE_NFS);
+ gdtc->dirty = global_node_page_state(NR_FILE_DIRTY);
domain_dirty_limits(gdtc);

if (gdtc->dirty > gdtc->bg_thresh)
--
2.26.0