lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2010]   [Feb]   [13]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
    Patch in this message
    /
    Date
    From
    SubjectRe: [PATCH] writeback: Fix broken sync writeback

    On Friday 2010-02-12 16:45, Linus Torvalds wrote:
    >On Fri, 12 Feb 2010, Jens Axboe wrote:
    >>
    >> This fixes it by using the passed in page writeback count, instead of
    >> doing MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES batches, which gets us much better performance
    >> (Jan reports it's up from ~400KB/sec to 10MB/sec) and makes sync(1)
    >> finish properly even when new pages are being dirted.
    >
    >This seems broken.

    It seems so. Jens, Jan Kara, your patch does not entirely fix this.
    While there is no sync/fsync to be seen in these traces, I can
    tell there's a livelock, without Dirty decreasing at all.

    INFO: task flush-8:0:354 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
    "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message.
    flush-8:0 D 00000000005691a0 5560 354 2 0x28000000000
    Call Trace:
    [0000000000568de4] start_this_handle+0x36c/0x520
    [00000000005691a0] jbd2_journal_start+0xb4/0xe0
    [000000000054f99c] ext4_journal_start_sb+0x54/0x9c
    [0000000000540de0] ext4_da_writepages+0x1e0/0x460
    [00000000004ab3e4] do_writepages+0x28/0x4c
    [00000000004f825c] writeback_single_inode+0xf0/0x330
    [00000000004f90a8] writeback_inodes_wb+0x4e4/0x600
    [00000000004f9354] wb_writeback+0x190/0x20c
    [00000000004f967c] wb_do_writeback+0x1d4/0x1f0
    [00000000004f96c0] bdi_writeback_task+0x28/0xa0
    [00000000004b71dc] bdi_start_fn+0x64/0xc8
    [00000000004786f0] kthread+0x58/0x6c
    [000000000042ae7c] kernel_thread+0x30/0x48
    [0000000000478644] kthreadd+0xb8/0x10c
    1 lock held by flush-8:0/354:
    #0: (&type->s_umount_key#18){......}, at: [<00000000004f8fc8>]
    # writeback_inodes_wb+0x404/0x600
    INFO: task jbd2/sda6-8:588 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
    "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message.
    jbd2/sda6-8 D 000000000056eea0 7272 588 2 0x18000000000
    Call Trace:
    [000000000056976c] jbd2_journal_commit_transaction+0x218/0x15e0
    [000000000056eea0] kjournald2+0x138/0x2fc
    [00000000004786f0] kthread+0x58/0x6c
    [000000000042ae7c] kernel_thread+0x30/0x48
    [0000000000478644] kthreadd+0xb8/0x10c
    no locks held by jbd2/sda6-8/588.
    INFO: task rpmbuild:6580 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
    "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message.
    rpmbuild D 00000000005691a0 16 6580 6562 0x310061101000080
    Call Trace:
    [0000000000568de4] start_this_handle+0x36c/0x520
    [00000000005691a0] jbd2_journal_start+0xb4/0xe0
    [000000000054f99c] ext4_journal_start_sb+0x54/0x9c
    [000000000053dcd4] ext4_dirty_inode+0x8/0x3c
    [00000000004f8888] __mark_inode_dirty+0x20/0x15c
    [00000000004eeb34] file_update_time+0x104/0x124
    [00000000004a50d4] __generic_file_aio_write+0x264/0x36c
    [00000000004a5228] generic_file_aio_write+0x4c/0xa4
    [00000000005390c0] ext4_file_write+0x94/0xa4
    [00000000004dc12c] do_sync_write+0x84/0xd4
    [00000000004dca78] vfs_write+0x70/0x12c
    [00000000004dcbcc] SyS_write+0x2c/0x5c
    [0000000000406214] linux_sparc_syscall32+0x34/0x40
    1 lock held by rpmbuild/6580:
    #0: (&sb->s_type->i_mutex_key#9){......}, at: [<00000000004a5214>]
    # generic_file_aio_write+0x38/0xa4
    etc.

    >
    >The whole point of MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES was to make sure that we don't
    >generate a single IO bigger than a couple of MB. And then we have that
    >loop around things to do multiple chunks. Your change to use nr_pages
    >seems to make the whole looping totally pointless, and breaks that "don't
    >do huge hunks" logic.
    >
    >So I don't think that your patch is correct.
    >
    >That said, I _do_ believe you when you say it makes a difference, which
    >makes me think there is a bug there. I just don't think you fixed the
    >right bug, and your change just happens to do what you wanted by pure
    >random luck.
    >
    >The _real_ bug seems to bethe one you mentioned, but then ignored:
    >
    >> Instead of flushing everything older than the sync run, it will do
    >> chunks of normal MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES writeback and restart over and
    >> over.
    >
    >and it would seem that the _logical_ way to fix it would be something like
    >the appended...
    >
    >Hmm? Even when you do a 'fdatasync()', it's not going to guarantee that
    >any _future_ data is written back, so the 'oldest_jif' thing would seem to
    >be sane regardless of sync mode.
    >
    > NOTE NOTE NOTE! I do have to admit that this patch scares me, because
    > there could be some bug in the 'older_than_this' logic that means that
    > somebody sets it even if the inode is already dirty. So this patch makes
    > conceptual sense to me, and I think it's the right thing to do, but I
    > also suspect that we do not actually have a lot of test coverage of the
    > whole 'older_than_this' logic, because it historically has been just a
    > small optimization for kupdated.
    >
    > So this patch scares me, as it could break 'fdatasync' entirely. So
    > somebody should really double-check the whole 'dirtied_when' logic, just
    > to be safe. If anybody ever sets 'dirtied_when' to the current time even
    > if the inode is already dirty (and has an earlier dirtied_when'), then
    > that would open up 'fdatasync()' and friends up to not writing things
    > back properly at all (because a newer write set 'dirtied_when' so that
    > old writes get ignored and thought to be 'totally new')
    >
    >Comments?
    >
    > Linus
    >
    >---
    > fs/fs-writeback.c | 15 ++++++++++-----
    > 1 files changed, 10 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
    >
    >diff --git a/fs/fs-writeback.c b/fs/fs-writeback.c
    >index 1a7c42c..a0a8424 100644
    >--- a/fs/fs-writeback.c
    >+++ b/fs/fs-writeback.c
    >@@ -738,11 +738,16 @@ static long wb_writeback(struct bdi_writeback *wb,
    > long wrote = 0;
    > struct inode *inode;
    >
    >- if (wbc.for_kupdate) {
    >- wbc.older_than_this = &oldest_jif;
    >- oldest_jif = jiffies -
    >- msecs_to_jiffies(dirty_expire_interval * 10);
    >- }
    >+ /*
    >+ * We never write back data that was dirtied _after_ we
    >+ * started writeback. But kupdate doesn't even want to
    >+ * write back recently dirtied stuff, only older data.
    >+ */
    >+ oldest_jif = jiffies-1;
    >+ wbc.older_than_this = &oldest_jif;
    >+ if (wbc.for_kupdate)
    >+ oldest_jif -= msecs_to_jiffies(dirty_expire_interval * 10);
    >+
    > if (!wbc.range_cyclic) {
    > wbc.range_start = 0;
    > wbc.range_end = LLONG_MAX;
    >



    \
     
     \ /
      Last update: 2010-02-13 14:01    [W:2.699 / U:0.080 seconds]
    ©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site