Re: [PATCH] Add unaccounted time to timeslice_used.

Vivek Goyal
2011-03-22T17:33:40Z

On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 02:55:27PM -0700, Justin TerAvest wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 6:55 AM, Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@redhat.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 01:06:12PM -0800, Justin TerAvest wrote:
> >> There are two kind of times that tasks are not charged for: the first
> >> seek and the extra time slice used over the allocated timeslice. Both
> >> of these exported as a new unaccounted_time stat.
> >>
> >> I think it would be good to have this reported in 'time' as well, but
> >> that is probably a separate discussion.
> >>
> >
> > Justin,
> >
> > I would say that for such optimization do make sure that you mention that
> > these are useful only if one is driving a queue depth of 1.
>
> Hi Vivek,
>
> That's a good point. I should have mentioned that.
>
> >
> > Otherwise previous queue might have dumped bunch of requests in device
> > and expired. Now new queue's first request completion time is also
> > impacted by the requests dumped by other queues.
> >
> > There are already so many stats which I have never used so far and I have
> > not encountered anybody else using these either. I think primary reason
> > being that in general nobody forced the queue depth of 1 hence most of the
> > timing stats are of no use.
>
> We could probably put the data collected here back into "time"
> eventually, but having it separate right now helps build confidence in
> the accuracy of the stats.
>
> >
> > So personally I am not very keen on keep on increasing number of stats in
> > CFQ which are useful only when using queue depth 1 as that might not be
> > the common case. But Jens likes it, so....
> >
> > Also a comment inline.
> >
> > [..]
> >> @@ -3314,9 +3321,7 @@ static void cfq_preempt_queue(struct cfq_data *cfqd, struct cfq_queue *cfqq)
> >>       BUG_ON(!cfq_cfqq_on_rr(cfqq));
> >>
> >>       cfq_service_tree_add(cfqd, cfqq, 1);
> >> -
> >> -     cfqq->slice_end = 0;
> >> -     cfq_mark_cfqq_slice_new(cfqq);
> >> +     __cfq_set_active_queue(cfqd, cfqq);
> >
> > So far a new queue selection was always in select_queue(). Now this will
> > change it and new queue selection will also take place in
> > cfq_preempt_queue().
> >
> > Also I think this is not right. It is not necessary that we select the
> > preempting queue. For example a sync queue in one group can preempt the
> > async in root group but it might happen that we still select again
> > the root group's sync queue for dispatch.
> >
> > So queue selection logic should be driven by select_queue() which selects
> > group first then workload with-in group and then queue with-in workload
> > and we shoud not be setting active queue here.
>
> That sounds reasonable. I will send out another version of the patch
> that will only clear the stats for the cfqq.

Hi Justin,

Are you planning to send a fix?

- do not set active queue in preempt_queue()
- move unaccounted time under debug?

Thanks
Vivek