Re: [RFC] block integrity: Fix write after checksum calculationproblem

[Dave Chinner]

On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 11:24:50AM -0500, Martin K. Petersen wrote:
> >>>>> "Dave" == Dave Chinner <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> 
> >> Agreed.  I too am curious to study which circumstances favor copying
> >> vs blocking.
> 
> Dave> IMO blocking is generally preferable in high throughput threaded
> Dave> workloads as there is always another thread that can do useful
> Dave> work while we wait for IO to complete. Most use cases for DIF
> Dave> center around high throughput environments....
> 
> Yeah.
> 
> A while back I did a bunch of tests with a liberal amount of
> wait_on_page_writeback() calls added to (I think) ext2, ext3, and
> XFS. For my regular workloads there was no measurable change (kernel
> builds, random database and I/O tests). I'm sure we'll unearth some apps
> that will suffer when DI is on but so far I'm not too worried about
> blocking in the data path.
> 
> My main concern is wrt. metadata because that's where extN really
> hurts. Simple test: Unpack a kernel tarball and watch the directory
> block fireworks. Given how frequently those buffers get hit I'm sure
> blocking would cause performance to tank completely. I looked into
> fixing this in ext2 but I had to stop because my eyes were bleeding.

Not problems with metadata modifications for XFS - all metadata IO
is done with a lock held preventing modifications while IO is in
progress.

Cheers,

Dave.
-- 
Dave Chinner
david@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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