kernel/linux.git/include/linux/writeback.h, branch v2.6.30

Revert "mm: add /proc controls for pdflush threads"

2009-05-15T09:32:24+00:00

This reverts commit fafd688e4c0c34da0f3de909881117d374e4c7af. Work is progressing to switch away from pdflush as the process backing for flushing out dirty data. So it seems pointless to add more knobs to control pdflush threads. The original author of the patch did not have any specific use cases for adding the knobs, so we can easily revert this before 2.6.30 to avoid having to maintain this API forever. Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

mm: add /proc controls for pdflush threads

2009-04-07T15:31:03+00:00

Add /proc entries to give the admin the ability to control the minimum and maximum number of pdflush threads. This allows finer control of pdflush on both large and small machines. The rationale is simply one size does not fit all. Admins on large and/or small systems may want to tune the min/max pdflush thread count to best suit their needs. Right now the min/max is hardcoded to 2/8. While probably a fair estimate for smaller machines, large machines with large numbers of CPUs and large numbers of filesystems/block devices may benefit from larger numbers of threads working on different block devices. Even if the background flushing algorithm is radically changed, it is still likely that multiple threads will be involved and admins would still desire finer control on the min/max other than to have to recompile the kernel. The patch adds '/proc/sys/vm/nr_pdflush_threads_min' and '/proc/sys/vm/nr_pdflush_threads_max' with r/w permissions. The minimum value for nr_pdflush_threads_min is 1 and the maximum value is the current value of nr_pdflush_threads_max. This minimum is required since additional thread creation is performed in a pdflush thread itself. The minimum value for nr_pdflush_threads_max is the current value of nr_pdflush_threads_min and the maximum value can be 1000. Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt is also updated. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix comment, fix whitespace, use __read_mostly] Signed-off-by: Peter W Morreale Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

mm: fix proc_dointvec_userhz_jiffies "breakage"

2009-04-01T15:59:13+00:00

Addresses http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9838 On i386, HZ=1000, jiffies_to_clock_t() converts time in a somewhat strange way from the user's point of view: # echo 500 >/proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs # cat /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs 499 So, we have 5000 jiffies converted to only 499 clock ticks and reported back. TICK_NSEC = 999848 ACTHZ = 256039 Keeping in-kernel variable in units passed from userspace will fix issue of course, but this probably won't be right for every sysctl. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes] Signed-off-by: Alexey Dobriyan Cc: Peter Zijlstra Cc: Nick Piggin Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

fs: remove WB_SYNC_HOLD

2009-01-06T23:59:09+00:00

Remove WB_SYNC_HOLD. The primary motiviation is the design of my anti-starvation code for fsync. It requires taking an inode lock over the sync operation, so we could run into lock ordering problems with multiple inodes. It is possible to take a single global lock to solve the ordering problem, but then that would prevent a future nice implementation of "sync multiple inodes" based on lock order via inode address. Seems like a backward step to remove this, but actually it is busted anyway: we can't use the inode lists for data integrity wait: an inode can be taken off the dirty lists but still be under writeback. In order to satisfy data integrity semantics, we should wait for it to finish writeback, but if we only search the dirty lists, we'll miss it. It would be possible to have a "writeback" list, for sys_sync, I suppose. But why complicate things by prematurely optimise? For unmounting, we could avoid the "livelock avoidance" code, which would be easier, but again premature IMO. Fixing the existing data integrity problem will come next. Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

mm: add dirty_background_bytes and dirty_bytes sysctls

2009-01-06T23:59:03+00:00

This change introduces two new sysctls to /proc/sys/vm: dirty_background_bytes and dirty_bytes. dirty_background_bytes is the counterpart to dirty_background_ratio and dirty_bytes is the counterpart to dirty_ratio. With growing memory capacities of individual machines, it's no longer sufficient to specify dirty thresholds as a percentage of the amount of dirtyable memory over the entire system. dirty_background_bytes and dirty_bytes specify quantities of memory, in bytes, that represent the dirty limits for the entire system. If either of these values is set, its value represents the amount of dirty memory that is needed to commence either background or direct writeback. When a `bytes' or `ratio' file is written, its counterpart becomes a function of the written value. For example, if dirty_bytes is written to be 8096, 8K of memory is required to commence direct writeback. dirty_ratio is then functionally equivalent to 8K / the amount of dirtyable memory: dirtyable_memory = free pages + mapped pages + file cache dirty_background_bytes = dirty_background_ratio * dirtyable_memory -or- dirty_background_ratio = dirty_background_bytes / dirtyable_memory AND dirty_bytes = dirty_ratio * dirtyable_memory -or- dirty_ratio = dirty_bytes / dirtyable_memory Only one of dirty_background_bytes and dirty_background_ratio may be specified at a time, and only one of dirty_bytes and dirty_ratio may be specified. When one sysctl is written, the other appears as 0 when read. The `bytes' files operate on a page size granularity since dirty limits are compared with ZVC values, which are in page units. Prior to this change, the minimum dirty_ratio was 5 as implemented by get_dirty_limits() although /proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio would show any user written value between 0 and 100. This restriction is maintained, but dirty_bytes has a lower limit of only one page. Also prior to this change, the dirty_background_ratio could not equal or exceed dirty_ratio. This restriction is maintained in addition to restricting dirty_background_bytes. If either background threshold equals or exceeds that of the dirty threshold, it is implicitly set to half the dirty threshold. Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra Cc: Dave Chinner Cc: Christoph Lameter Signed-off-by: David Rientjes Cc: Andrea Righi Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

mm: change dirty limit type specifiers to unsigned long

2009-01-06T23:59:02+00:00

The background dirty and dirty limits are better defined with type specifiers of unsigned long since negative writeback thresholds are not possible. These values, as returned by get_dirty_limits(), are normally compared with ZVC values to determine whether writeback shall commence or be throttled. Such page counts cannot be negative, so declaring the page limits as signed is unnecessary. Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra Cc: Dave Chinner Cc: Christoph Lameter Signed-off-by: David Rientjes Cc: Andrea Righi Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

vfs: Add no_nrwrite_index_update writeback control flag

2008-10-16T14:09:17+00:00

If no_nrwrite_index_update is set we don't update nr_to_write and address space writeback_index in write_cache_pages. This change enables a file system to skip these updates in write_cache_pages and do them in the writepages() callback. This patch will be followed by an ext4 patch that make use of these new flags. Signed-off-by: Aneesh Kumar K.V Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" CC: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org

vfs: Remove the range_cont writeback mode.

2008-10-14T13:21:02+00:00

Ext4 was the only user of range_cont writeback mode and ext4 switched to a different method. So remove the range_cont mode which is not used in the kernel. Signed-off-by: Aneesh Kumar K.V Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" CC: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org

Merge branch 'for_linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tytso/ext4

2008-07-15T15:36:38+00:00

* 'for_linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tytso/ext4: (61 commits) ext4: Documention update for new ordered mode and delayed allocation ext4: do not set extents feature from the kernel ext4: Don't allow nonextenst mount option for large filesystem ext4: Enable delalloc by default. ext4: delayed allocation i_blocks fix for stat ext4: fix delalloc i_disksize early update issue ext4: Handle page without buffers in ext4_*_writepage() ext4: Add ordered mode support for delalloc ext4: Invert lock ordering of page_lock and transaction start in delalloc mm: Add range_cont mode for writeback ext4: delayed allocation ENOSPC handling percpu_counter: new function percpu_counter_sum_and_set ext4: Add delayed allocation support in data=writeback mode vfs: add hooks for ext4's delayed allocation support jbd2: Remove data=ordered mode support using jbd buffer heads ext4: Use new framework for data=ordered mode in JBD2 jbd2: Implement data=ordered mode handling via inodes vfs: export filemap_fdatawrite_range() ext4: Fix lock inversion in ext4_ext_truncate() ext4: Invert the locking order of page_lock and transaction start ...

mm: Add range_cont mode for writeback

2008-07-11T23:27:31+00:00

Filesystems like ext4 needs to start a new transaction in the writepages for block allocation. This happens with delayed allocation and there is limit to how many credits we can request from the journal layer. So we call write_cache_pages multiple times with wbc->nr_to_write set to the maximum possible value limitted by the max journal credits available. Add a new mode to writeback that enables us to handle this behaviour. In the new mode we update the wbc->range_start to point to the new offset to be written. Next call to call to write_cache_pages will start writeout from specified range_start offset. In the new mode we also limit writing to the specified wbc->range_end. Signed-off-by: Aneesh Kumar K.V Signed-off-by: Mingming Cao Acked-by: Jan Kara Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o"