block/diskstats: more accurate approximation of io_ticks for slow disks

Currently io_ticks is approximated by adding one at each start and end of
requests if jiffies counter has changed. This works perfectly for requests
shorter than a jiffy or if one of requests starts/ends at each jiffy.

If disk executes just one request at a time and they are longer than two
jiffies then only first and last jiffies will be accounted.

Fix is simple: at the end of request add up into io_ticks jiffies passed
since last update rather than just one jiffy.

Example: common HDD executes random read 4k requests around 12ms.

fio --name=test --filename=/dev/sdb --rw=randread --direct=1 --runtime=30 &
iostat -x 10 sdb

Note changes of iostat's "%util" 8,43% -> 99,99% before/after patch:

Before:

Device:         rrqm/s   wrqm/s     r/s     w/s    rkB/s    wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz   await r_await w_await  svctm  %util
sdb               0,00     0,00   82,60    0,00   330,40     0,00     8,00     0,96   12,09   12,09    0,00   1,02   8,43

After:

Device:         rrqm/s   wrqm/s     r/s     w/s    rkB/s    wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz   await r_await w_await  svctm  %util
sdb               0,00     0,00   82,50    0,00   330,00     0,00     8,00     1,00   12,10   12,10    0,00  12,12  99,99

Now io_ticks does not loose time between start and end of requests, but
for queue-depth > 1 some I/O time between adjacent starts might be lost.

For load estimation "%util" is not as useful as average queue length,
but it clearly shows how often disk queue is completely empty.

Fixes: 5b18b5a73760 ("block: delete part_round_stats and switch to less precise counting")
Signed-off-by: Konstantin Khlebnikov <khlebnikov@yandex-team.ru>
Reviewed-by: Ming Lei <ming.lei@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>

1 files changed, 4 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/iostats.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/iostats.rst
index df5b8345c41d..9b14b0c2c9c4 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/iostats.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/iostats.rst
@@ -100,7 +100,7 @@ Field 10 -- # of milliseconds spent doing I/Os (unsigned int)
 
     Since 5.0 this field counts jiffies when at least one request was
     started or completed. If request runs more than 2 jiffies then some
-    I/O time will not be accounted unless there are other requests.
+    I/O time might be not accounted in case of concurrent requests.
 
 Field 11 -- weighted # of milliseconds spent doing I/Os (unsigned int)
     This field is incremented at each I/O start, I/O completion, I/O
@@ -143,6 +143,9 @@ are summed (possibly overflowing the unsigned long variable they are
 summed to) and the result given to the user.  There is no convenient
 user interface for accessing the per-CPU counters themselves.
 
+Since 4.19 request times are measured with nanoseconds precision and
+truncated to milliseconds before showing in this interface.
+
 Disks vs Partitions
 -------------------