Re: [PATCH 8/8] writeback: Do not sleep on the congestion queue ifthere are no congested BDIs or if significant congestion is notbeing encountered in the current zone

[Mel Gorman]

On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 05:13:38PM +0900, Minchan Kim wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 01:27:51PM +0100, Mel Gorman wrote:
> > If wait_iff_congested() is called with no BDI congested, the function simply
> > calls cond_resched(). In the event there is significant writeback happening
> > in the zone that is being reclaimed, this can be a poor decision as reclaim
> > would succeed once writeback was completed. Without any backoff logic,
> > younger clean pages can be reclaimed resulting in more reclaim overall and
> > poor performance.
> 
> I agree. 
> 
> > 
> > This patch tracks how many pages backed by a congested BDI were found during
> > scanning. If all the dirty pages encountered on a list isolated from the
> > LRU belong to a congested BDI, the zone is marked congested until the zone
> 
> I am not sure it works well. 

Check the competion times for the micro-mapped-file-stream benchmark in
the leader mail. Backing off like this is faster overall for some
workloads.

> We just met the condition once but we backoff it until high watermark.

Reaching the high watermark is considered to be a relieving of pressure.

> (ex, 32 isolated dirty pages == 32 pages on congestioned bdi)
> First impression is rather _aggressive_.
> 

Yes, it is. I intended to start with something quite aggressive that is
close to existing behaviour and then experiment with alternatives.

For example, I considered clearing zone congestion when but nr_bdi_congested
drops to 0. This would be less aggressive in terms of congestion waiting but
it is further from todays behaviour. I felt it would be best to introduce
wait_iff_congested() in one kernel cycle but wait to a later cycle to deviate
a lot from congestion_wait().

> How about more checking?
> For example, if above pattern continues repeately above some threshold,
> we can regard "zone is congested" and then if the pattern isn't repeated 
> during some threshold, we can regard "zone isn't congested any more.".
> 

I also considered these options and got stuck at what the "some
threshold" is and how to record the history. Should it be recorded on a
per BDI basis for example? I think all these questions can be answered
but should be in a different cycle.

> > reaches the high watermark.  wait_iff_congested() then checks both the
> > number of congested BDIs and if the current zone is one that has encounted
> > congestion recently, it will sleep on the congestion queue. Otherwise it
> > will call cond_reched() to yield the processor if necessary.
> > 
> > The end result is that waiting on the congestion queue is avoided when
> > necessary but when significant congestion is being encountered,
> > reclaimers and page allocators will back off.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@xxxxxxxxx>
> > ---
> >  include/linux/backing-dev.h |    2 +-
> >  include/linux/mmzone.h      |    8 ++++
> >  mm/backing-dev.c            |   23 ++++++++----
> >  mm/page_alloc.c             |    4 +-
> >  mm/vmscan.c                 |   83 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++------
> >  5 files changed, 98 insertions(+), 22 deletions(-)
> > 
> > diff --git a/include/linux/backing-dev.h b/include/linux/backing-dev.h
> > index 72bb510..f1b402a 100644
> > --- a/include/linux/backing-dev.h
> > +++ b/include/linux/backing-dev.h
> > +static enum bdi_queue_status may_write_to_queue(struct backing_dev_info *bdi,
> 
> <snip>
> 
> >  			      struct scan_control *sc)
> >  {
> > +	enum bdi_queue_status ret = QUEUEWRITE_DENIED;
> > +
> >  	if (current->flags & PF_SWAPWRITE)
> > -		return 1;
> > +		return QUEUEWRITE_ALLOWED;
> >  	if (!bdi_write_congested(bdi))
> > -		return 1;
> > +		return QUEUEWRITE_ALLOWED;
> > +	else
> > +		ret = QUEUEWRITE_CONGESTED;
> >  	if (bdi == current->backing_dev_info)
> > -		return 1;
> > +		return QUEUEWRITE_ALLOWED;
> >  
> >  	/* lumpy reclaim for hugepage often need a lot of write */
> >  	if (sc->order > PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER)
> > -		return 1;
> > -	return 0;
> > +		return QUEUEWRITE_ALLOWED;
> > +	return ret;
> >  }
> 
> The function can't return QUEUEXXX_DENIED.
> It can affect disable_lumpy_reclaim. 
> 

Yes, but that change was made in "vmscan: Narrow the scenarios lumpy
reclaim uses synchrounous reclaim". Maybe I am misunderstanding your
objection.

> >  
> >  /*
> > @@ -352,6 +362,8 @@ static void handle_write_error(struct address_space *mapping,
> >  typedef enum {
> >  	/* failed to write page out, page is locked */
> >  	PAGE_KEEP,
> > +	/* failed to write page out due to congestion, page is locked */
> > +	PAGE_KEEP_CONGESTED,
> >  	/* move page to the active list, page is locked */
> >  	PAGE_ACTIVATE,
> >  	/* page has been sent to the disk successfully, page is unlocked */
> > @@ -401,9 +413,14 @@ static pageout_t pageout(struct page *page, struct address_space *mapping,
> >  	}
> >  	if (mapping->a_ops->writepage == NULL)
> >  		return PAGE_ACTIVATE;
> > -	if (!may_write_to_queue(mapping->backing_dev_info, sc)) {
> > +	switch (may_write_to_queue(mapping->backing_dev_info, sc)) {
> > +	case QUEUEWRITE_CONGESTED:
> > +		return PAGE_KEEP_CONGESTED;
> > +	case QUEUEWRITE_DENIED:
> >  		disable_lumpy_reclaim_mode(sc);
> >  		return PAGE_KEEP;
> > +	case QUEUEWRITE_ALLOWED:
> > +		;
> >  	}
> >  
> >  	if (clear_page_dirty_for_io(page)) {
> > @@ -682,11 +699,14 @@ static noinline_for_stack void free_page_list(struct list_head *free_pages)
> >   * shrink_page_list() returns the number of reclaimed pages
> >   */
> >  static unsigned long shrink_page_list(struct list_head *page_list,
> > +				      struct zone *zone,
> >  				      struct scan_control *sc)
> >  {
> >  	LIST_HEAD(ret_pages);
> >  	LIST_HEAD(free_pages);
> >  	int pgactivate = 0;
> > +	unsigned long nr_dirty = 0;
> > +	unsigned long nr_congested = 0;
> >  	unsigned long nr_reclaimed = 0;
> >  
> >  	cond_resched();
> > @@ -706,6 +726,7 @@ static unsigned long shrink_page_list(struct list_head *page_list,
> >  			goto keep;
> >  
> >  		VM_BUG_ON(PageActive(page));
> > +		VM_BUG_ON(page_zone(page) != zone);
> >  
> >  		sc->nr_scanned++;
> >  
> > @@ -783,6 +804,8 @@ static unsigned long shrink_page_list(struct list_head *page_list,
> >  		}
> >  
> >  		if (PageDirty(page)) {
> > +			nr_dirty++;
> > +
> >  			if (references == PAGEREF_RECLAIM_CLEAN)
> >  				goto keep_locked;
> >  			if (!may_enter_fs)
> > @@ -792,6 +815,8 @@ static unsigned long shrink_page_list(struct list_head *page_list,
> >  
> >  			/* Page is dirty, try to write it out here */
> >  			switch (pageout(page, mapping, sc)) {
> > +			case PAGE_KEEP_CONGESTED:
> > +				nr_congested++;
> >  			case PAGE_KEEP:
> >  				goto keep_locked;
> >  			case PAGE_ACTIVATE:
> > @@ -903,6 +928,15 @@ keep_lumpy:
> >  		VM_BUG_ON(PageLRU(page) || PageUnevictable(page));
> >  	}
> >  
> > +	/*
> > +	 * Tag a zone as congested if all the dirty pages encountered were
> > +	 * backed by a congested BDI. In this case, reclaimers should just
> > +	 * back off and wait for congestion to clear because further reclaim
> > +	 * will encounter the same problem
> > +	 */
> > +	if (nr_dirty == nr_congested)
> > +		zone_set_flag(zone, ZONE_CONGESTED);
> > +
> >  	free_page_list(&free_pages);
> >  
> >  	list_splice(&ret_pages, page_list);
> > @@ -1387,12 +1421,12 @@ shrink_inactive_list(unsigned long nr_to_scan, struct zone *zone,
> >  
> >  	spin_unlock_irq(&zone->lru_lock);
> >  
> > -	nr_reclaimed = shrink_page_list(&page_list, sc);
> > +	nr_reclaimed = shrink_page_list(&page_list, zone, sc);
> >  
> >  	/* Check if we should syncronously wait for writeback */
> >  	if (should_reclaim_stall(nr_taken, nr_reclaimed, priority, sc)) {
> >  		set_lumpy_reclaim_mode(priority, sc, true);
> > -		nr_reclaimed += shrink_page_list(&page_list, sc);
> > +		nr_reclaimed += shrink_page_list(&page_list, zone, sc);
> >  	}
> >  
> >  	local_irq_disable();
> > @@ -1940,8 +1974,26 @@ static unsigned long do_try_to_free_pages(struct zonelist *zonelist,
> >  
> >  		/* Take a nap, wait for some writeback to complete */
> >  		if (!sc->hibernation_mode && sc->nr_scanned &&
> > -		    priority < DEF_PRIORITY - 2)
> > -			congestion_wait(BLK_RW_ASYNC, HZ/10);
> > +		    priority < DEF_PRIORITY - 2) {
> > +			struct zone *active_zone = NULL;
> > +			unsigned long max_writeback = 0;
> > +			for_each_zone_zonelist(zone, z, zonelist,
> > +					gfp_zone(sc->gfp_mask)) {
> > +				unsigned long writeback;
> > +
> > +				/* Initialise for first zone */
> > +				if (active_zone == NULL)
> > +					active_zone = zone;
> > +
> > +				writeback = zone_page_state(zone, NR_WRITEBACK);
> > +				if (writeback > max_writeback) {
> > +					max_writeback = writeback;
> > +					active_zone = zone;
> > +				}
> > +			}
> > +
> > +			wait_iff_congested(active_zone, BLK_RW_ASYNC, HZ/10);
> > +		}
> 
> Other place just considers preferred zone. 
> What is the rationale that consider max writeback zone in all zone of zonelist to 
> call wait_iff_congeested?

Initially, it was because wait_iff_congested() heuristic was based on
writeback, not zone congestion.  This time around, it was because I
wanted to be aggressive in terms of triggering the congestion wait to be
better than existing behaviour but not too far from it.

> Maybe max writeback zone can be much slow bdi but this process could be not related
> to the bdi. It can make random stall by point of view of this proces.
> 

Fair point, I will retest using the preferred zone.

> >  	}
> >  
> >  out:
> > @@ -2251,6 +2303,15 @@ loop_again:
> >  				if (!zone_watermark_ok(zone, order,
> >  					    min_wmark_pages(zone), end_zone, 0))
> >  					has_under_min_watermark_zone = 1;
> > +			} else {
> > +				/*
> > +				 * If a zone reaches its high watermark,
> > +				 * consider it to be no longer congested. It's
> > +				 * possible there are dirty pages backed by
> > +				 * congested BDIs but as pressure is relieved,
> > +				 * spectulatively avoid congestion waits
> > +				 */
> > +				zone_clear_flag(zone, ZONE_CONGESTED);
> >  			}
> >  
> >  		}
> > -- 
> > 1.7.1
> > 
> 
> -- 
> Kind regards,
> Minchan Kim
> 

-- 
Mel Gorman
Part-time Phd Student                          Linux Technology Center
University of Limerick                         IBM Dublin Software Lab
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