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6 commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Peter Zijlstra
04fbfdc14e mm: per device dirty threshold
Scale writeback cache per backing device, proportional to its writeout speed.

By decoupling the BDI dirty thresholds a number of problems we currently have
will go away, namely:

 - mutual interference starvation (for any number of BDIs);
 - deadlocks with stacked BDIs (loop, FUSE and local NFS mounts).

It might be that all dirty pages are for a single BDI while other BDIs are
idling. By giving each BDI a 'fair' share of the dirty limit, each one can have
dirty pages outstanding and make progress.

A global threshold also creates a deadlock for stacked BDIs; when A writes to
B, and A generates enough dirty pages to get throttled, B will never start
writeback until the dirty pages go away. Again, by giving each BDI its own
'independent' dirty limit, this problem is avoided.

So the problem is to determine how to distribute the total dirty limit across
the BDIs fairly and efficiently. A DBI that has a large dirty limit but does
not have any dirty pages outstanding is a waste.

What is done is to keep a floating proportion between the DBIs based on
writeback completions. This way faster/more active devices get a larger share
than slower/idle devices.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix warnings]
[hugh@veritas.com: Fix occasional hang when a task couldn't get out of balance_dirty_pages]
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-10-17 08:42:45 -07:00
Peter Zijlstra
b2e8fb6efa mm: scalable bdi statistics counters
Provide scalable per backing_dev_info statistics counters.

Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-10-17 08:42:45 -07:00
Peter Zijlstra
c4dc4beed2 nfs: remove congestion_end()
These patches aim to improve balance_dirty_pages() and directly address three
issues:
  1) inter device starvation
  2) stacked device deadlocks
  3) inter process starvation

1 and 2 are a direct result from removing the global dirty limit and using
per device dirty limits. By giving each device its own dirty limit is will
no longer starve another device, and the cyclic dependancy on the dirty limit
is broken.

In order to efficiently distribute the dirty limit across the independant
devices a floating proportion is used, this will allocate a share of the total
limit proportional to the device's recent activity.

3 is done by also scaling the dirty limit proportional to the current task's
recent dirty rate.

This patch:

nfs: remove congestion_end().  It's redundant, clear_bdi_congested() already
wakes the waiters.

Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Cc: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no>
Cc: "J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@fieldses.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-10-17 08:42:44 -07:00
Adrian Bunk
8f8a68ee48 remove mm/backing-dev.c:congestion_wait_interruptible()
congestion_wait_interruptible() is no longer used.

Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
Acked-by: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-16 09:05:52 -07:00
Peter Zijlstra
89a09141df [PATCH] nfs: fix congestion control
The current NFS client congestion logic is severly broken, it marks the
backing device congested during each nfs_writepages() call but doesn't
mirror this in nfs_writepage() which makes for deadlocks.  Also it
implements its own waitqueue.

Replace this by a more regular congestion implementation that puts a cap on
the number of active writeback pages and uses the bdi congestion waitqueue.

Also always use an interruptible wait since it makes sense to be able to
SIGKILL the process even for mounts without 'intr'.

Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Acked-by: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@engr.sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-03-16 19:25:05 -07:00
Andrew Morton
3fcfab16c5 [PATCH] separate bdi congestion functions from queue congestion functions
Separate out the concept of "queue congestion" from "backing-dev congestion".
Congestion is a backing-dev concept, not a queue concept.

The blk_* congestion functions are retained, as wrappers around the core
backing-dev congestion functions.

This proper layering is needed so that NFS can cleanly use the congestion
functions, and so that CONFIG_BLOCK=n actually links.

Cc: "Thomas Maier" <balagi@justmail.de>
Cc: "Jens Axboe" <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
Cc: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no>
Cc: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Cc: Peter Osterlund <petero2@telia.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-10-20 10:26:35 -07:00