Re: [patch 5/5] vfs: per superblock dentry unused list

From: Jan Blunck
Date: Mon May 29 2006 - 07:55:11 EST


On Mon, May 29, David Chinner wrote:

> > - spin_lock(&dcache_lock);
> > - list_for_each_entry_safe(dentry, pos, &dentry_unused, d_lru) {
> > - if (dentry->d_sb != sb)
> > - continue;
> > - list_del(&dentry->d_lru);
> > - list_add(&dentry->d_lru, &dentry_unused);
> > + /*
> > + * Try to be fair to the unused lists:
> > + * sb_count/sb_unused ~ global_count/global_unused
> > + */
> > + tmp = sb->s_dentry_stat.nr_unused/((unused/count)+1);
> > + prune_dcache_sb(sb, tmp);
>
> So if count = SHRINK_BATCH = 128, unused is 12800 (for easy maths) and we have
> 100 unused on the first superbloc, we end up with tmp = 100 / ((12800/128)+1)
> = 100/101 = 0.
>
> Essentially, if your superblock has less than (global_unused / count) dentries
> on it, they'll never get shrunk. They need to take at least one dentry off
> each superblock to ensure that the lru lists are slowly turned over. This is
> needed to allow pages in the slab pinned by dentries on lesser used or
> smaller filesystems to be freed before you've trimmed almost every dentry
> from the superblocks that contain orders of magnitude more dentries...
>
> IOWs, I think that tmp must be >= 1 for all calls here.
>
> Realistically, we are limited in resolution by the way the shrinker works
> here. When we have a difference of greater than 2 orders of magnitude between
> the small superblock and the large superblock lists we are either going to
> trim the small superblock lists too much or not enough....

Yeah, I have problems with that part as well. Some of your assumtions are
wrong. If the sb.nr_unused count is smaller than 128, the superblock is not
shrinked, thats true. But there is a superblock with more than 128 unused
dentries (since the global_unused count was 12800). So the prune_dcache() is
shrinking that one first. After a few runs, prune_dcache() is shrinking the
superblock with 128 unused dentries aswell.

Although, what happens when we have 100 superblocks with 128 unused dentries
each ... I have to think about this. The right solution would be to shrink the
dentries with the help of their age. But at the moment I don't have any bright
ideas in that direction.

> > @@ -499,30 +488,16 @@ static void select_sb(struct super_block
> > * is used to free the dcache before unmounting a file
> > * system
> > */
> > -
> > void shrink_dcache_sb(struct super_block * sb)
> > {
>
> The only difference between this function and prune_dcache_sb
> is the handlingof the DCACHE_REFERENCED bit. i built a common
> function for these, because....
>
> > @@ -671,7 +646,7 @@ void shrink_dcache_parent(struct dentry
> > int found;
> >
> > while ((found = select_parent(parent)) != 0)
> > - prune_dcache(found);
> > + prune_dcache_sb(parent->d_sb, found);
> > }
>
> ... prune_dcache_parent() uses the same code as well....

No. prune_dcache() is working on the unused list in the opposite (reverse)
direction. shrink_dcache_sb() (basically my prune_dcache_sb()) is shrinking
all unused dentries. In that case it is better to visit the unused list in the
normal (forward) direction (~only one pass).

Jan
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