kernel/linux.git/include/linux/writeback.h, branch linux-2.6.34.y

vfs: improve writeback_inodes_wb()

2010-03-12T09:03:42+00:00

Do not pin/unpin superblock for every inode in writeback_inodes_wb(), pin it for the whole group of inodes which belong to the same superblock and call writeback_sb_inodes() handler for them. Signed-off-by: Edward Shishkin Cc: Jens Axboe Cc: Wu Fengguang Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

fs-writeback: Add helper function to start writeback if idle

2009-12-23T12:57:07+00:00

ext4, at least, would like to start pushing on writeback if it starts to get close to ENOSPC when reserving worst-case blocks for delalloc writes. Writing out delalloc data will convert those worst-case predictions into usually smaller actual usage, freeing up space before we hit ENOSPC based on this speculation. Thanks to Jens for the suggestion for the helper function, & the naming help. I've made the helper return status on whether writeback was started even though I don't plan to use it in the ext4 patch; it seems like it would be potentially useful to test this in some cases. Signed-off-by: Eric Sandeen Acked-by: Jan Kara

kill I_LOCK

2009-12-17T16:03:25+00:00

After I_SYNC was split from I_LOCK the leftover is always used together with I_NEW and thus superflous. Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig Signed-off-by: Al Viro

writeback: introduce wbc.for_background

2009-12-03T12:54:25+00:00

It will lower the flush priority for NFS, and maybe more in future. Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang Cc: Trond Myklebust Cc: Jens Axboe Cc: Christoph Hellwig Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

sysctl: remove "struct file *" argument of ->proc_handler

2009-09-24T14:21:04+00:00

It's unused. It isn't needed -- read or write flag is already passed and sysctl shouldn't care about the rest. It _was_ used in two places at arch/frv for some reason. Signed-off-by: Alexey Dobriyan Cc: David Howells Cc: "Eric W. Biederman" Cc: Al Viro Cc: Ralf Baechle Cc: Martin Schwidefsky Cc: Ingo Molnar Cc: "David S. Miller" Cc: James Morris Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

writeback: separate starting of sync vs opportunistic writeback

2009-09-16T13:18:52+00:00

bdi_start_writeback() is currently split into two paths, one for WB_SYNC_NONE and one for WB_SYNC_ALL. Add bdi_sync_writeback() for WB_SYNC_ALL writeback and let bdi_start_writeback() handle only WB_SYNC_NONE. Push down the writeback_control allocation and only accept the parameters that make sense for each function. This cleans up the API considerably. Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

writeback: get rid of wbc->for_writepages

2009-09-16T13:16:18+00:00

It's only set, it's never checked. Kill it. Acked-by: Jan Kara Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

vfs: Remove generic_osync_inode() and sync_page_range{_nolock}()

2009-09-14T15:08:17+00:00

Remove these three functions since nobody uses them anymore. Signed-off-by: Jan Kara

writeback: get rid of pdflush completely

2009-09-11T07:20:25+00:00

It is now unused, so kill it off. Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

writeback: switch to per-bdi threads for flushing data

2009-09-11T07:20:25+00:00

This gets rid of pdflush for bdi writeout and kupdated style cleaning. pdflush writeout suffers from lack of locality and also requires more threads to handle the same workload, since it has to work in a non-blocking fashion against each queue. This also introduces lumpy behaviour and potential request starvation, since pdflush can be starved for queue access if others are accessing it. A sample ffsb workload that does random writes to files is about 8% faster here on a simple SATA drive during the benchmark phase. File layout also seems a LOT more smooth in vmstat: r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa 0 1 0 608848 2652 375372 0 0 0 71024 604 24 1 10 48 42 0 1 0 549644 2712 433736 0 0 0 60692 505 27 1 8 48 44 1 0 0 476928 2784 505192 0 0 4 29540 553 24 0 9 53 37 0 1 0 457972 2808 524008 0 0 0 54876 331 16 0 4 38 58 0 1 0 366128 2928 614284 0 0 4 92168 710 58 0 13 53 34 0 1 0 295092 3000 684140 0 0 0 62924 572 23 0 9 53 37 0 1 0 236592 3064 741704 0 0 4 58256 523 17 0 8 48 44 0 1 0 165608 3132 811464 0 0 0 57460 560 21 0 8 54 38 0 1 0 102952 3200 873164 0 0 4 74748 540 29 1 10 48 41 0 1 0 48604 3252 926472 0 0 0 53248 469 29 0 7 47 45 where vanilla tends to fluctuate a lot in the creation phase: r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa 1 1 0 678716 5792 303380 0 0 0 74064 565 50 1 11 52 36 1 0 0 662488 5864 319396 0 0 4 352 302 329 0 2 47 51 0 1 0 599312 5924 381468 0 0 0 78164 516 55 0 9 51 40 0 1 0 519952 6008 459516 0 0 4 78156 622 56 1 11 52 37 1 1 0 436640 6092 541632 0 0 0 82244 622 54 0 11 48 41 0 1 0 436640 6092 541660 0 0 0 8 152 39 0 0 51 49 0 1 0 332224 6200 644252 0 0 4 102800 728 46 1 13 49 36 1 0 0 274492 6260 701056 0 0 4 12328 459 49 0 7 50 43 0 1 0 211220 6324 763356 0 0 0 106940 515 37 1 10 51 39 1 0 0 160412 6376 813468 0 0 0 8224 415 43 0 6 49 45 1 1 0 85980 6452 886556 0 0 4 113516 575 39 1 11 54 34 0 2 0 85968 6452 886620 0 0 0 1640 158 211 0 0 46 54 A 10 disk test with btrfs performs 26% faster with per-bdi flushing. A SSD based writeback test on XFS performs over 20% better as well, with the throughput being very stable around 1GB/sec, where pdflush only manages 750MB/sec and fluctuates wildly while doing so. Random buffered writes to many files behave a lot better as well, as does random mmap'ed writes. A separate thread is added to sync the super blocks. In the long term, adding sync_supers_bdi() functionality could get rid of this thread again. Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe