* [PATCH v2] squashfs: avoid thundering-herd cache wakeups
@ 2026-08-07 17:24 Usama Arif
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From: Usama Arif @ 2026-08-07 17:24 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: phillip, Andrew Morton, linux-kernel, linux-fsdevel
Cc: brauner, hannes, shakeel.butt, jlayton, boris, riel, kernel-team,
Usama Arif
squashfs_cache_get() puts a task to sleep when its block is not cached
and every cache entry is busy. Those sleeps are non-exclusive, so the
nr_exclusive == 1 budget squashfs_cache_put() has always passed to
wake_up() is inert and one release makes every waiter runnable. A wakee
only returns to squashfs_cache_get() if it observes cache->unused before
the entry is reclaimed; later wakees see zero and re-queue inside
wait_event() without rescanning. One freed entry satisfies exactly one
capacity waiter, so waking the rest is waste.
On a Meta production host serving a Python web application from a
packaged squashfs image, a 30-second trace caught 1,045,132
cache-release wake calls and 19,511,556 wakeups: 18.7 per release,
although each release added only one reusable cache entry. This was
causing significant spikes in CPU usage.
Make the waits exclusive, enqueueing while still holding cache->lock so
that a concurrent lookup either sees the waiter queued or the waiter
sees the block that lookup publishes. Two things follow.
A wakee cannot be assumed to consume the entry it was woken for: it may
find its own block published meanwhile, share that entry, and leave the
freed one unclaimed. So a wakee which shares hands its wakeup on to the
next waiter, as commit 0ddad21d3e99 ("pipe: use exclusive waits when
reading or writing") does with wake_next_reader.
And a waiter can now sleep through a publication of the very block it
wants, which the old broadcast gave it repeated chances to notice. So
waiters are keyed by block: publishing wakes every waiter for that block
(nr_exclusive == 0), freeing an entry wakes one. That needs a custom
wake callback, like wake_page_function() in mm/filemap.c, which also
records which wakeup arrived so the handoff only fires for a capacity
wakee.
Broadcast is kept where more than one task can proceed - every waiter
for a published block, and the wake_up_all() on entry->wait_queue - at
the cost of walking the queue under wait_queue.lock to test the key.
Waiters are now served FIFO with a scheduling round trip per handoff
hop, so per-waiter latency changes; the filebench run below is 4x
oversubscribed, where that should hurt most.
Measured on a 32-CPU VM against a read-only squashfs (gzip,
DECOMP_MULTI_PERCPU, FILE_DIRECT, default 8 metadata / 3 fragment cache
entries) staged in tmpfs, page cache dropped each iteration to force
cold decompression:
elbencho, 64 threads
metadata stat 700 -> 1320 files/s 1.9x
small-file read 40 -> 60 MiB/s 1.5x
filebench, 128 threads, open+read+stat+close (mean of 3x 30s)
throughput 11,314 -> 25,186 ops/s 2.2x
sched:sched_wakeup 27.0 -> 4.55 per op 5.9x fewer
context switches 37.2 -> 7.64 per op 4.9x fewer
Wakeups and context switches are per operation, since the two runs did
2.2x different amounts of work. Workloads which never queue for a cache
entry gain no wakeups.
Signed-off-by: Usama Arif <usama.arif@linux.dev>
---
fs/squashfs/cache.c | 114 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
fs/squashfs/squashfs_fs_sb.h | 9 +++
2 files changed, 117 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
diff --git a/fs/squashfs/cache.c b/fs/squashfs/cache.c
index 67abd4dff2222..1a95e9cbbc5a8 100644
--- a/fs/squashfs/cache.c
+++ b/fs/squashfs/cache.c
@@ -45,19 +45,82 @@
#include "squashfs.h"
#include "page_actor.h"
+/*
+ * Waiters on cache->wait_queue are keyed by the block they want, so a wakeup
+ * can name who it is for. A NULL key is a capacity wakeup: one entry became
+ * free, so wake one waiter. A block key is a publication wakeup: that block
+ * now has an entry, so wake every waiter which can share it.
+ */
+struct squashfs_cache_wait {
+ wait_queue_entry_t wait;
+ u64 block;
+ bool capacity_wake;
+};
+
+static int squashfs_cache_wake_function(wait_queue_entry_t *wait,
+ unsigned int mode, int sync, void *key)
+{
+ struct squashfs_cache_wait *cache_wait =
+ container_of(wait, struct squashfs_cache_wait, wait);
+ u64 *block = key;
+
+ if (block && cache_wait->block != *block)
+ return 0;
+
+ WRITE_ONCE(cache_wait->capacity_wake, !block);
+
+ /*
+ * Wake and unlink unconditionally instead of using
+ * autoremove_wake_function(), which unlinks only when it changed the
+ * task state. A waiter can be made runnable by something which does
+ * not go through this queue: wake_up_process() takes TASK_NORMAL, and
+ * a cgroup v2 thaw calls it on every task in the cgroup, as do
+ * free_pid() on a pid namespace init and a late rcuwait_wake_up().
+ * try_to_wake_up() then fails. Leaving such a waiter queued with a
+ * reason already recorded would let it act on a freed entry it was not
+ * given, and the failure would not consume the exclusive budget, so a
+ * second waiter would be woken for the same entry.
+ *
+ * list_del_init_careful() must be the last access to @cache_wait: it
+ * releases the waiter, whose wait structure lives on its stack, and it
+ * pairs with list_empty_careful() in finish_wait() to publish the
+ * store above. __wake_up_common() samples ->flags and the next entry
+ * before calling here, so it does not touch @wait afterwards either.
+ */
+ default_wake_function(wait, mode, sync, key);
+ list_del_init_careful(&wait->entry);
+
+ return 1;
+}
+
+static void squashfs_cache_wake_block(struct squashfs_cache *cache, u64 block)
+{
+ /* nr_exclusive == 0: wake every waiter which matches the key. */
+ __wake_up(&cache->wait_queue, TASK_NORMAL, 0, &block);
+}
+
/*
* Look-up block in cache, and increment usage count. If not in cache, read
* and decompress it from disk.
+ *
+ * A caller which finds no free entry sleeps on cache->wait_queue as an
+ * exclusive waiter, so squashfs_cache_put() releasing one entry wakes exactly
+ * one task. Because a wakee may find its block published in the meantime and
+ * share that entry rather than claim the free one, a wakee which shares hands
+ * its wakeup on to the next waiter.
*/
struct squashfs_cache_entry *squashfs_cache_get(struct super_block *sb,
struct squashfs_cache *cache, u64 block, int length)
{
int i, n;
struct squashfs_cache_entry *entry;
+ bool capacity_wake = false;
spin_lock(&cache->lock);
while (1) {
+ bool pending, wake_next, wake_block;
+
for (i = cache->curr_blk, n = 0; n < cache->entries; n++) {
if (cache->entry[i].block == block) {
cache->curr_blk = i;
@@ -72,9 +135,25 @@ struct squashfs_cache_entry *squashfs_cache_get(struct super_block *sb,
* go to sleep waiting for one to become available.
*/
if (cache->unused == 0) {
+ struct squashfs_cache_wait wait = {
+ .block = block,
+ .capacity_wake = false,
+ };
+
+ init_wait_func(&wait.wait,
+ squashfs_cache_wake_function);
cache->num_waiters++;
+ /*
+ * Enqueue while still holding cache->lock, so
+ * that a concurrent lookup either sees us
+ * queued or we see the block it publishes.
+ */
+ prepare_to_wait_exclusive(&cache->wait_queue,
+ &wait.wait, TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE);
spin_unlock(&cache->lock);
- wait_event(cache->wait_queue, cache->unused);
+ schedule();
+ finish_wait(&cache->wait_queue, &wait.wait);
+ capacity_wake = READ_ONCE(wait.capacity_wake);
spin_lock(&cache->lock);
cache->num_waiters--;
continue;
@@ -105,8 +184,18 @@ struct squashfs_cache_entry *squashfs_cache_get(struct super_block *sb,
entry->pending = 1;
entry->num_waiters = 0;
entry->error = 0;
+ wake_block = cache->num_waiters > 0;
spin_unlock(&cache->lock);
+ /*
+ * The entry is now findable, so release everybody
+ * queued for this block to share it rather than each
+ * waiting for an entry of their own. They will block
+ * on entry->wait_queue below until the read completes.
+ */
+ if (wake_block)
+ squashfs_cache_wake_block(cache, block);
+
entry->length = squashfs_read_data(sb, block, length,
&entry->next_index, entry->actor);
@@ -138,20 +227,33 @@ struct squashfs_cache_entry *squashfs_cache_get(struct super_block *sb,
* for reuse.
*/
entry = &cache->entry[i];
- if (entry->refcount == 0)
+ if (entry->refcount == 0) {
cache->unused--;
+ /* This claims the capacity we were woken for. */
+ capacity_wake = false;
+ }
entry->refcount++;
/*
* If the entry is currently being filled in by another process
* go to sleep waiting for it to become available.
*/
- if (entry->pending) {
+ pending = entry->pending;
+ if (pending)
entry->num_waiters++;
- spin_unlock(&cache->lock);
+
+ /*
+ * We were woken because an entry became free, but shared a
+ * block instead of claiming it. Hand the wakeup on, otherwise
+ * the free entry sits unclaimed while others sleep.
+ */
+ wake_next = capacity_wake && cache->unused && cache->num_waiters;
+ spin_unlock(&cache->lock);
+
+ if (wake_next)
+ wake_up(&cache->wait_queue);
+ if (pending)
wait_event(entry->wait_queue, !entry->pending);
- } else
- spin_unlock(&cache->lock);
goto out;
}
diff --git a/fs/squashfs/squashfs_fs_sb.h b/fs/squashfs/squashfs_fs_sb.h
index c01998eec1467..b87221ea9bdd6 100644
--- a/fs/squashfs/squashfs_fs_sb.h
+++ b/fs/squashfs/squashfs_fs_sb.h
@@ -12,6 +12,15 @@
#include "squashfs_fs.h"
+/*
+ * Waiters for a cache entry sleep on wait_queue as exclusive waiters, so
+ * freeing one entry wakes one task. See squashfs_cache_get().
+ *
+ * num_waiters is only a hint used to skip pointless wakeups: it is
+ * incremented before a task queues itself and decremented after it is woken,
+ * so it can transiently exceed the number of queued tasks. It never
+ * undercounts them, which is what the wakeup paths rely on.
+ */
struct squashfs_cache {
char *name;
int entries;
base-commit: a13307e97d5c54b65720bb71fa379960ded1e51a
--
2.53.0-Meta
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