Re: Nanosecond fs timestamp support: sad

Trond Myklebust
2011-07-23T02:36:00Z

On Fri, 2011-07-22 at 21:38 -0400, J. Bruce Fields wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 07:07:41PM -0500, Matt Mackall wrote:
> > On Sat, 2011-07-23 at 08:59 +1000, NeilBrown wrote:
> > > On Fri, 22 Jul 2011 18:31:58 -0400 "J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@fieldses.org>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 06:10:39PM -0400, bfields wrote:
> > > > > On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 11:47:32PM +0200, Andi Kleen wrote:
> > > > > > On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 04:11:42PM -0500, Matt Mackall wrote:
> > > > > > > On Fri, 2011-07-22 at 22:59 +0200, Andi Kleen wrote:
> > > > > > > > > Indeed. Only usefully exists on ext4 and requires extra system calls.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Not sure what you mean? It's in stat(2), just like the timestamps.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I don't see anything that looks like a version or generation number in
> > > > > > > either the man pages, the asm-generic/stat.h, or glibc's asm/stat.h.
> > > > > > > Pointer?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Hmm you're right. I thought it was in there, but apparently not.
> > > > > > I think it should be added there though. We still have some unused
> > > > > > fields.
> > > > >
> > > > > But last I checked I thought it was only ext4 that actually incremented
> > > > > the i_version on IO, and even then only when given a (non-default) mount
> > > > > option.
> > > > >
> > > > > My notes on what needs to be done there:
> > > > >
> > > > > - collect data to determine whether turning on i_version causes
> > > > > any significant performance regressions.
> > > > > - Last I talked to him, Ted Tso recommended running
> > > > > Bonnie on a local disk, since it does a lot of little
> > > > > writes, which is somewhat of a worst case, as it will
> > > > > generate extra metadata updates for each write.
> > > > > Compare total wall-clock time, number of iops, and
> > > > > number of bytes (using some kind of block tracing).
> > > > > - If there aren't any problems, turn it on by default, and we're
> > > > > done.
> > > >
> > > > (Well,and talk the other filesystem implementors into doing it.)
> > > >
> > >
> > > But does anyone apart from NFSv4 actually *want* i_version as opposed to the
> > > more-generally-useful precise timestamps?
> >
> > In theory, a microsecond timestamp (ie gtod) may already not be good
> > enough for all applications. But i_version also doesn't allow comparing
> > across files.
> >
> > > If not, we probably should tell NFSv4 to use timestamps and focus on making
> > > them work well.
> > > ??
> > >
> > > The timestamp used doesn't need to update ever nanosecond. I think if it
> > > were just updated on every userspace->kernel transition (or effective
> > > equivalents inside kernel threads) that would be enough capture all
> > > causality. I wonder how that would be achieved.. I wonder if RCU machinery
> > > could help - doesn't it keep track of when threads schedule ... or something?
> >
> > Sort of.
> >
> > Some observations:
> >
> > - we only need to go to higher resolution when two events happen in the
> > same time quantum
> > - this applies at both the level of seconds and jiffies
> > - if the only file touched in a given quantum gets touched ago, we don't
> > need to update its timestamp if stat wasn't also called on it in this
> > quantum
> > - we never need to use a higher resolution than the global
> > min(s_time_gran)
>
> Right, so there was a rough algorithm hashed out somewhere around here:
>
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1022866/focus=1024624
>
> that depended on those observations.
>
> NFS presents a worst-case as the standard NFSv3 read and write
> operations include timestamps in the result. So every single IO comes
> with a stat. So either you have a clock good enough to give a distinct
> timestamp for all of those, or you fall back on a global counter that
> ends up serializing all IO. I think. I admit I'm not sure I understand
> your proposal below.

...or you admit that NFSv3 is no longer able to keep up with modern
processing speeds and storage, and you ditch it in favour of NFSv4.

Time-stamps are _not_ the optimal way to label changes in a clustered
environment (or even a multi-cpu/multi-core environment): aside from the
various issues involving absolute time vs. wall clock time, you also
have to deal with clock synchronisation across those nodes/cpus/cores at
the < microsecond resolution level. Have fun doing that...

Trond