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2011-10-31writeback: Add a 'reason' to wb_writeback_workCurt Wohlgemuth
This creates a new 'reason' field in a wb_writeback_work structure, which unambiguously identifies who initiates writeback activity. A 'wb_reason' enumeration has been added to writeback.h, to enumerate the possible reasons. The 'writeback_work_class' and tracepoint event class and 'writeback_queue_io' tracepoints are updated to include the symbolic 'reason' in all trace events. And the 'writeback_inodes_sbXXX' family of routines has had a wb_stats parameter added to them, so callers can specify why writeback is being started. Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Curt Wohlgemuth <curtw@google.com> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-10-31writeback: send work item to queue_io, move_expired_inodesCurt Wohlgemuth
Instead of sending ->older_than_this to queue_io() and move_expired_inodes(), send the entire wb_writeback_work structure. There are other fields of a work item that are useful in these routines and in tracepoints. Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Curt Wohlgemuth <curtw@google.com> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-10-03writeback: per-bdi background thresholdWu Fengguang
One thing puzzled me is that in JBOD case, the per-disk writeout performance is smaller than the corresponding single-disk case even when they have comparable bdi_thresh. Tracing shows find that in single disk case, bdi_writeback is always kept high while in JBOD case, it could drop low from time to time and correspondingly bdi_reclaimable could sometimes rush high. The fix is to watch bdi_reclaimable and kick background writeback as soon as it goes high. This resembles the global background threshold but in per-bdi manner. The trick is, as long as bdi_reclaimable does not go high, bdi_writeback naturally won't go low because bdi_reclaimable+bdi_writeback ~= bdi_thresh. With less fluctuated writeback pages, JBOD performance is observed to increase noticeably in various cases. vmstat:nr_written values before/after patch: 3.1.0-rc4-wo-underrun+ 3.1.0-rc4-bgthresh3+ ------------------------ ------------------------ 125596480 +25.9% 158179363 JBOD-10HDD-16G/ext4-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-20:10-X 61790815 +110.4% 130032231 JBOD-10HDD-16G/ext4-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-20:10-X 58853546 -0.1% 58823828 JBOD-10HDD-16G/ext4-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-20:10-X 110159811 +24.7% 137355377 JBOD-10HDD-16G/xfs-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-20:10-X 69544762 +10.8% 77080047 JBOD-10HDD-16G/xfs-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-20:10-X 50644862 +0.5% 50890006 JBOD-10HDD-16G/xfs-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-20:10-X 42677090 +28.0% 54643527 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=100M/ext4-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-100M:10-X 47491324 +13.3% 53785605 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=100M/ext4-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-100M:10-X 52548986 +0.9% 53001031 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=100M/ext4-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-100M:10-X 26783091 +36.8% 36650248 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=100M/xfs-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-100M:10-X 35526347 +14.0% 40492312 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=100M/xfs-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-100M:10-X 44670723 -1.1% 44177606 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=100M/xfs-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-100M:10-X 127996037 +22.4% 156719990 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=2G/ext4-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-2048M:10-X 57518856 +3.8% 59677625 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=2G/ext4-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-2048M:10-X 51919909 +12.2% 58269894 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=2G/ext4-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-2048M:10-X 86410514 +79.0% 154660433 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=2G/xfs-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-2048M:10-X 40132519 +38.6% 55617893 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=2G/xfs-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-2048M:10-X 48423248 +7.5% 52042927 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=2G/xfs-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-2048M:10-X 206041046 +44.1% 296846536 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=4G/xfs-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-4096M:10-X 72312903 -19.4% 58272885 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=4G/xfs-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-4096M:10-X 50635672 -0.5% 50384787 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=4G/xfs-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-4096M:10-X 68308534 +115.7% 147324758 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=800M/ext4-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-800M:10-X 57882933 +14.5% 66269621 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=800M/ext4-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-800M:10-X 52183472 +12.8% 58855181 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=800M/ext4-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-800M:10-X 53788956 +94.2% 104460352 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=800M/xfs-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-800M:10-X 44493342 +35.5% 60298210 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=800M/xfs-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-800M:10-X 42641209 +18.9% 50681038 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=800M/xfs-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-800M:10-X Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-10-03writeback: add bg_threshold parameter to __bdi_update_bandwidth()Wu Fengguang
No behavior change. Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-07-31don't busy retry the inode on failed grab_super_passive()Wu Fengguang
This fixes a soft lockup on conditions a) the flusher is working on a work by __bdi_start_writeback(), while b) someone else calls writeback_inodes_sb*() or sync_inodes_sb(), which grab sb->s_umount and enqueue a new work for the flusher to execute The s_umount grabbed by (b) will fail the grab_super_passive() in (a). Then if the inode is requeued, wb_writeback() will busy retry on it. As a result, wb_writeback() loops for ever without releasing wb->list_lock, which further blocks other tasks. Fix the busy loop by redirtying the inode. This may undesirably delay the writeback of the inode, however most likely it will be picked up soon by the queued work by writeback_inodes_sb*(), sync_inodes_sb() or even writeback_inodes_wb(). bug url: http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-fsdevel/msg47292.html Reported-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org> Tested-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-07-26Merge branch 'for-linus' of ↵Linus Torvalds
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/wfg/writeback * 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/wfg/writeback: (27 commits) mm: properly reflect task dirty limits in dirty_exceeded logic writeback: don't busy retry writeback on new/freeing inodes writeback: scale IO chunk size up to half device bandwidth writeback: trace global_dirty_state writeback: introduce max-pause and pass-good dirty limits writeback: introduce smoothed global dirty limit writeback: consolidate variable names in balance_dirty_pages() writeback: show bdi write bandwidth in debugfs writeback: bdi write bandwidth estimation writeback: account per-bdi accumulated written pages writeback: make writeback_control.nr_to_write straight writeback: skip tmpfs early in balance_dirty_pages_ratelimited_nr() writeback: trace event writeback_queue_io writeback: trace event writeback_single_inode writeback: remove .nonblocking and .encountered_congestion writeback: remove writeback_control.more_io writeback: skip balance_dirty_pages() for in-memory fs writeback: add bdi_dirty_limit() kernel-doc writeback: avoid extra sync work at enqueue time writeback: elevate queue_io() into wb_writeback() ... Fix up trivial conflicts in fs/fs-writeback.c and mm/filemap.c
2011-07-24writeback: don't busy retry writeback on new/freeing inodesWu Fengguang
Fix a system hang bug introduced by commit b7a2441f9966 ("writeback: remove writeback_control.more_io") and e8dfc3058 ("writeback: elevate queue_io() into wb_writeback()") easily reproducible with high memory pressure and lots of file creation/deletions, for example, a kernel build in limited memory. It hangs when some inode is in the I_NEW, I_FREEING or I_WILL_FREE state, the flusher will get stuck busy retrying that inode, never releasing wb->list_lock. The lock in turn blocks all kinds of other tasks when they are trying to grab it. As put by Jan, it's a safe change regarding data integrity. I_FREEING or I_WILL_FREE inodes are written back by iput_final() and it is reclaim code that is responsible for eventually removing them. So writeback code can safely ignore them. I_NEW inodes should move out of this state when they are fully set up and in the writeback round following that, we will consider them for writeback. So the change makes sense. CC: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Reported-by: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com> Tested-by: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-07-20superblock: move pin_sb_for_writeback() to fs/super.cDave Chinner
The per-sb shrinker has the same requirement as the writeback threads of ensuring that the superblock is usable and pinned for the time it takes to run the work. Both need to take a passive reference to the sb, take a read lock on the s_umount lock and then only continue if an unmount is not in progress. pin_sb_for_writeback() does this exactly, so move it to fs/super.c and rename it to grab_super_passive() and exporting it via fs/internal.h for all the VFS code to be able to use. Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
2011-07-09writeback: scale IO chunk size up to half device bandwidthWu Fengguang
Originally, MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES was hard-coded to 1024 because of a concern of not holding I_SYNC for too long. (At least, that was the comment previously.) This doesn't make sense now because the only time we wait for I_SYNC is if we are calling sync or fsync, and in that case we need to write out all of the data anyway. Previously there may have been other code paths that waited on I_SYNC, but not any more. -- Theodore Ts'o So remove the MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES constraint. The writeback pages will adapt to as large as the storage device can write within 500ms. XFS is observed to do IO completions in a batch, and the batch size is equal to the write chunk size. To avoid dirty pages to suddenly drop out of balance_dirty_pages()'s dirty control scope and create large fluctuations, the chunk size is also limited to half the control scope. The balance_dirty_pages() control scrope is [(background_thresh + dirty_thresh) / 2, dirty_thresh] which is by default [15%, 20%] of global dirty pages, whose range size is dirty_thresh / DIRTY_FULL_SCOPE. The adpative write chunk size will be rounded to the nearest 4MB boundary. http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13930 CC: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> CC: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> CC: Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com> CC: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-07-09writeback: introduce smoothed global dirty limitWu Fengguang
The start of a heavy weight application (ie. KVM) may instantly knock down determine_dirtyable_memory() if the swap is not enabled or full. global_dirty_limits() and bdi_dirty_limit() will in turn get global/bdi dirty thresholds that are _much_ lower than the global/bdi dirty pages. balance_dirty_pages() will then heavily throttle all dirtiers including the light ones, until the dirty pages drop below the new dirty thresholds. During this _deep_ dirty-exceeded state, the system may appear rather unresponsive to the users. About "deep" dirty-exceeded: task_dirty_limit() assigns 1/8 lower dirty threshold to heavy dirtiers than light ones, and the dirty pages will be throttled around the heavy dirtiers' dirty threshold and reasonably below the light dirtiers' dirty threshold. In this state, only the heavy dirtiers will be throttled and the dirty pages are carefully controlled to not exceed the light dirtiers' dirty threshold. However if the threshold itself suddenly drops below the number of dirty pages, the light dirtiers will get heavily throttled. So introduce global_dirty_limit for tracking the global dirty threshold with policies - follow downwards slowly - follow up in one shot global_dirty_limit can effectively mask out the impact of sudden drop of dirtyable memory. It will be used in the next patch for two new type of dirty limits. Note that the new dirty limits are not going to avoid throttling the light dirtiers, but could limit their sleep time to 200ms. Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-07-09writeback: bdi write bandwidth estimationWu Fengguang
The estimation value will start from 100MB/s and adapt to the real bandwidth in seconds. It tries to update the bandwidth only when disk is fully utilized. Any inactive period of more than one second will be skipped. The estimated bandwidth will be reflecting how fast the device can writeout when _fully utilized_, and won't drop to 0 when it goes idle. The value will remain constant at disk idle time. At busy write time, if not considering fluctuations, it will also remain high unless be knocked down by possible concurrent reads that compete for the disk time and bandwidth with async writes. The estimation is not done purely in the flusher because there is no guarantee for write_cache_pages() to return timely to update bandwidth. The bdi->avg_write_bandwidth smoothing is very effective for filtering out sudden spikes, however may be a little biased in long term. The overheads are low because the bdi bandwidth update only occurs at 200ms intervals. The 200ms update interval is suitable, because it's not possible to get the real bandwidth for the instance at all, due to large fluctuations. The NFS commits can be as large as seconds worth of data. One XFS completion may be as large as half second worth of data if we are going to increase the write chunk to half second worth of data. In ext4, fluctuations with time period of around 5 seconds is observed. And there is another pattern of irregular periods of up to 20 seconds on SSD tests. That's why we are not only doing the estimation at 200ms intervals, but also averaging them over a period of 3 seconds and then go further to do another level of smoothing in avg_write_bandwidth. CC: Li Shaohua <shaohua.li@intel.com> CC: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-07-09writeback: make writeback_control.nr_to_write straightWu Fengguang
Pass struct wb_writeback_work all the way down to writeback_sb_inodes(), and initialize the struct writeback_control there. struct writeback_control is basically designed to control writeback of a single file, but we keep abuse it for writing multiple files in writeback_sb_inodes() and its callers. It immediately clean things up, e.g. suddenly wbc.nr_to_write vs work->nr_pages starts to make sense, and instead of saving and restoring pages_skipped in writeback_sb_inodes it can always start with a clean zero value. It also makes a neat IO pattern change: large dirty files are now written in the full 4MB writeback chunk size, rather than whatever remained quota in wbc->nr_to_write. Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Proposed-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-06-08writeback: trace event writeback_queue_ioWu Fengguang
Note that it adds a little overheads to account the moved/enqueued inodes from b_dirty to b_io. The "moved" accounting may be later used to limit the number of inodes that can be moved in one shot, in order to keep spinlock hold time under control. Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-06-08writeback: trace event writeback_single_inodeWu Fengguang
It is valuable to know how the dirty inodes are iterated and their IO size. "writeback_single_inode: bdi 8:0: ino=134246746 state=I_DIRTY_SYNC|I_SYNC age=414 index=0 to_write=1024 wrote=0" - "state" reflects inode->i_state at the end of writeback_single_inode() - "index" reflects mapping->writeback_index after the ->writepages() call - "to_write" is the wbc->nr_to_write at entrance of writeback_single_inode() - "wrote" is the number of pages actually written v2: add trace event writeback_single_inode_requeue as proposed by Dave. CC: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-06-08writeback: remove writeback_control.more_ioWu Fengguang
When wbc.more_io was first introduced, it indicates whether there are at least one superblock whose s_more_io contains more IO work. Now with the per-bdi writeback, it can be replaced with a simple b_more_io test. Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-06-08writeback: avoid extra sync work at enqueue timeWu Fengguang
This removes writeback_control.wb_start and does more straightforward sync livelock prevention by setting .older_than_this to prevent extra inodes from being enqueued in the first place. Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-06-08writeback: elevate queue_io() into wb_writeback()Wu Fengguang
Code refactor for more logical code layout. No behavior change. - remove the mis-named __writeback_inodes_sb() - wb_writeback()/writeback_inodes_wb() will decide when to queue_io() before calling __writeback_inodes_wb() Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-06-08writeback: split inode_wb_list_lock into bdi_writeback.list_lockChristoph Hellwig
Split the global inode_wb_list_lock into a per-bdi_writeback list_lock, as it's currently the most contended lock in the system for metadata heavy workloads. It won't help for single-filesystem workloads for which we'll need the I/O-less balance_dirty_pages, but at least we can dedicate a cpu to spinning on each bdi now for larger systems. Based on earlier patches from Nick Piggin and Dave Chinner. It reduces lock contentions to 1/4 in this test case: 10 HDD JBOD, 100 dd on each disk, XFS, 6GB ram lock_stat version 0.3 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- class name con-bounces contentions waittime-min waittime-max waittime-total acq-bounces acquisitions holdtime-min holdtime-max holdtime-total ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- vanilla 2.6.39-rc3: inode_wb_list_lock: 42590 44433 0.12 147.74 144127.35 252274 886792 0.08 121.34 917211.23 ------------------ inode_wb_list_lock 2 [<ffffffff81165da5>] bdev_inode_switch_bdi+0x29/0x85 inode_wb_list_lock 34 [<ffffffff8115bd0b>] inode_wb_list_del+0x22/0x49 inode_wb_list_lock 12893 [<ffffffff8115bb53>] __mark_inode_dirty+0x170/0x1d0 inode_wb_list_lock 10702 [<ffffffff8115afef>] writeback_single_inode+0x16d/0x20a ------------------ inode_wb_list_lock 2 [<ffffffff81165da5>] bdev_inode_switch_bdi+0x29/0x85 inode_wb_list_lock 19 [<ffffffff8115bd0b>] inode_wb_list_del+0x22/0x49 inode_wb_list_lock 5550 [<ffffffff8115bb53>] __mark_inode_dirty+0x170/0x1d0 inode_wb_list_lock 8511 [<ffffffff8115b4ad>] writeback_sb_inodes+0x10f/0x157 2.6.39-rc3 + patch: &(&wb->list_lock)->rlock: 11383 11657 0.14 151.69 40429.51 90825 527918 0.11 145.90 556843.37 ------------------------ &(&wb->list_lock)->rlock 10 [<ffffffff8115b189>] inode_wb_list_del+0x5f/0x86 &(&wb->list_lock)->rlock 1493 [<ffffffff8115b1ed>] writeback_inodes_wb+0x3d/0x150 &(&wb->list_lock)->rlock 3652 [<ffffffff8115a8e9>] writeback_sb_inodes+0x123/0x16f &(&wb->list_lock)->rlock 1412 [<ffffffff8115a38e>] writeback_single_inode+0x17f/0x223 ------------------------ &(&wb->list_lock)->rlock 3 [<ffffffff8110b5af>] bdi_lock_two+0x46/0x4b &(&wb->list_lock)->rlock 6 [<ffffffff8115b189>] inode_wb_list_del+0x5f/0x86 &(&wb->list_lock)->rlock 2061 [<ffffffff8115af97>] __mark_inode_dirty+0x173/0x1cf &(&wb->list_lock)->rlock 2629 [<ffffffff8115a8e9>] writeback_sb_inodes+0x123/0x16f hughd@google.com: fix recursive lock when bdi_lock_two() is called with new the same as old akpm@linux-foundation.org: cleanup bdev_inode_switch_bdi() comment Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-06-08writeback: refill b_io iff emptyWu Fengguang
There is no point to carry different refill policies between for_kupdate and other type of works. Use a consistent "refill b_io iff empty" policy which can guarantee fairness in an easy to understand way. A b_io refill will setup a _fixed_ work set with all currently eligible inodes and start a new round of walk through b_io. The "fixed" work set means no new inodes will be added to the work set during the walk. Only when a complete walk over b_io is done, new inodes that are eligible at the time will be enqueued and the walk be started over. This procedure provides fairness among the inodes because it guarantees each inode to be synced once and only once at each round. So all inodes will be free from starvations. This change relies on wb_writeback() to keep retrying as long as we made some progress on cleaning some pages and/or inodes. Without that ability, the old logic on background works relies on aggressively queuing all eligible inodes into b_io at every time. But that's not a guarantee. The below test script completes a slightly faster now: 2.6.39-rc3 2.6.39-rc3-dyn-expire+ ------------------------------------------------ all elapsed 256.043 252.367 stddev 24.381 12.530 tar elapsed 30.097 28.808 dd elapsed 13.214 11.782 #!/bin/zsh cp /c/linux-2.6.38.3.tar.bz2 /dev/shm/ umount /dev/sda7 mkfs.xfs -f /dev/sda7 mount /dev/sda7 /fs echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches tic=$(cat /proc/uptime|cut -d' ' -f2) cd /fs time tar jxf /dev/shm/linux-2.6.38.3.tar.bz2 & time dd if=/dev/zero of=/fs/zero bs=1M count=1000 & wait sync tac=$(cat /proc/uptime|cut -d' ' -f2) echo elapsed: $((tac - tic)) It maintains roughly the same small vs. large file writeout shares, and offers large files better chances to be written in nice 4M chunks. Analyzes from Dave Chinner in great details: Let's say we have lots of inodes with 100 dirty pages being created, and one large writeback going on. We expire 8 new inodes for every 1024 pages we write back. With the old code, we do: b_more_io (large inode) -> b_io (1l) 8 newly expired inodes -> b_io (1l, 8s) writeback large inode 1024 pages -> b_more_io b_more_io (large inode) -> b_io (8s, 1l) 8 newly expired inodes -> b_io (8s, 1l, 8s) writeback 8 small inodes 800 pages 1 large inode 224 pages -> b_more_io b_more_io (large inode) -> b_io (8s, 1l) 8 newly expired inodes -> b_io (8s, 1l, 8s) ..... Your new code: b_more_io (large inode) -> b_io (1l) 8 newly expired inodes -> b_io (1l, 8s) writeback large inode 1024 pages -> b_more_io (b_io == 8s) writeback 8 small inodes 800 pages b_io empty: (1800 pages written) b_more_io (large inode) -> b_io (1l) 14 newly expired inodes -> b_io (1l, 14s) writeback large inode 1024 pages -> b_more_io (b_io == 14s) writeback 10 small inodes 1000 pages 1 small inode 24 pages -> b_more_io (1l, 1s(24)) writeback 5 small inodes 500 pages b_io empty: (2548 pages written) b_more_io (large inode) -> b_io (1l, 1s(24)) 20 newly expired inodes -> b_io (1l, 1s(24), 20s) ...... Rough progression of pages written at b_io refill: Old code: total large file % of writeback 1024 224 21.9% (fixed) New code: total large file % of writeback 1800 1024 ~55% 2550 1024 ~40% 3050 1024 ~33% 3500 1024 ~29% 3950 1024 ~26% 4250 1024 ~24% 4500 1024 ~22.7% 4700 1024 ~21.7% 4800 1024 ~21.3% 4800 1024 ~21.3% (pretty much steady state from here) Ok, so the steady state is reached with a similar percentage of writeback to the large file as the existing code. Ok, that's good, but providing some evidence that is doesn't change the shared of writeback to the large should be in the commit message ;) The other advantage to this is that we always write 1024 page chunks to the large file, rather than smaller "whatever remains" chunks. CC: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-06-08writeback: the kupdate expire timestamp should be a moving targetWu Fengguang
Dynamically compute the dirty expire timestamp at queue_io() time. writeback_control.older_than_this used to be determined at entrance to the kupdate writeback work. This _static_ timestamp may go stale if the kupdate work runs on and on. The flusher may then stuck with some old busy inodes, never considering newly expired inodes thereafter. This has two possible problems: - It is unfair for a large dirty inode to delay (for a long time) the writeback of small dirty inodes. - As time goes by, the large and busy dirty inode may contain only _freshly_ dirtied pages. Ignoring newly expired dirty inodes risks delaying the expired dirty pages to the end of LRU lists, triggering the evil pageout(). Nevertheless this patch merely addresses part of the problem. v2: keep policy changes inside wb_writeback() and keep the wbc.older_than_this visibility as suggested by Dave. CC: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Signed-off-by: Itaru Kitayama <kitayama@cl.bb4u.ne.jp> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-06-08writeback: try more writeback as long as something was writtenWu Fengguang
writeback_inodes_wb()/__writeback_inodes_sb() are not aggressive in that they only populate possibly a subset of eligible inodes into b_io at entrance time. When the queued set of inodes are all synced, they just return, possibly with all queued inode pages written but still wbc.nr_to_write > 0. For kupdate and background writeback, there may be more eligible inodes sitting in b_dirty when the current set of b_io inodes are completed. So it is necessary to try another round of writeback as long as we made some progress in this round. When there are no more eligible inodes, no more inodes will be enqueued in queue_io(), hence nothing could/will be synced and we may safely bail. For example, imagine 100 inodes i0, i1, i2, ..., i90, i91, i99 At queue_io() time, i90-i99 happen to be expired and moved to s_io for IO. When finished successfully, if their total size is less than MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES, nr_to_write will be > 0. Then wb_writeback() will quit the background work (w/o this patch) while it's still over background threshold. This will be a fairly normal/frequent case I guess. Now that we do tagged sync and update inode->dirtied_when after the sync, this change won't livelock sync(1). I actually tried to write 1 page per 1ms with this command write-and-fsync -n10000 -S 1000 -c 4096 /fs/test and do sync(1) at the same time. The sync completes quickly on ext4, xfs, btrfs. Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-06-08writeback: introduce writeback_control.inodes_writtenWu Fengguang
The flusher works on dirty inodes in batches, and may quit prematurely if the batch of inodes happen to be metadata-only dirtied: in this case wbc->nr_to_write won't be decreased at all, which stands for "no pages written" but also mis-interpreted as "no progress". So introduce writeback_control.inodes_written to count the inodes get cleaned from VFS POV. A non-zero value means there are some progress on writeback, in which case more writeback can be tried. Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-06-08writeback: update dirtied_when for synced inode to prevent livelockWu Fengguang
Explicitly update .dirtied_when on synced inodes, so that they are no longer considered for writeback in the next round. It can prevent both of the following livelock schemes: - while true; do echo data >> f; done - while true; do touch f; done (in theory) The exact livelock condition is, during sync(1): (1) no new inodes are dirtied (2) an inode being actively dirtied On (2), the inode will be tagged and synced with .nr_to_write=LONG_MAX. When finished, it will be redirty_tail()ed because it's still dirty and (.nr_to_write > 0). redirty_tail() won't update its ->dirtied_when on condition (1). The sync work will then revisit it on the next queue_io() and find it eligible again because its old ->dirtied_when predates the sync work start time. We'll do more aggressive "keep writeback as long as we wrote something" logic in wb_writeback(). The "use LONG_MAX .nr_to_write" trick in commit b9543dac5bbc ("writeback: avoid livelocking WB_SYNC_ALL writeback") will no longer be enough to stop sync livelock. Reviewed-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-06-08writeback: introduce .tagged_writepages for the WB_SYNC_NONE sync stageWu Fengguang
sync(2) is performed in two stages: the WB_SYNC_NONE sync and the WB_SYNC_ALL sync. Identify the first stage with .tagged_writepages and do livelock prevention for it, too. Jan's commit f446daaea9 ("mm: implement writeback livelock avoidance using page tagging") is a partial fix in that it only fixed the WB_SYNC_ALL phase livelock. Although ext4 is tested to no longer livelock with commit f446daaea9, it may due to some "redirty_tail() after pages_skipped" effect which is by no means a guarantee for _all_ the file systems. Note that writeback_inodes_sb() is called by not only sync(), they are treated the same because the other callers also need livelock prevention. Impact: It changes the order in which pages/inodes are synced to disk. Now in the WB_SYNC_NONE stage, it won't proceed to write the next inode until finished with the current inode. Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> CC: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
2011-05-27fs: pass exact type of data dirties to ->dirty_inodeChristoph Hellwig
Tell the filesystem if we just updated timestamp (I_DIRTY_SYNC) or anything else, so that the filesystem can track internally if it needs to push out a transaction for fdatasync or not. This is just the prototype change with no user for it yet. I plan to push large XFS changes for the next merge window, and getting this trivial infrastructure in this window would help a lot to avoid tree interdependencies. Also remove incorrect comments that ->dirty_inode can't block. That has been changed a long time ago, and many implementations rely on it. Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
2011-03-31Fix common misspellingsLucas De Marchi
Fixes generated by 'codespell' and manually reviewed. Signed-off-by: Lucas De Marchi <lucas.demarchi@profusion.mobi>
2011-03-24fs: pull inode->i_lock up out of writeback_single_inodeDave Chinner
First thing we do in writeback_single_inode() is take the i_lock and the last thing we do is drop it. A caller already holds the i_lock, so pull the i_lock out of writeback_single_inode() to reduce the round trips on this lock during inode writeback. Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
2011-03-24fs: move i_wb_list out from under inode_lockDave Chinner
Protect the inode writeback list with a new global lock inode_wb_list_lock and use it to protect the list manipulations and traversals. This lock replaces the inode_lock as the inodes on the list can be validity checked while holding the inode->i_lock and hence the inode_lock is no longer needed to protect the list. Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
2011-03-24fs: move i_sb_list out from under inode_lockDave Chinner
Protect the per-sb inode list with a new global lock inode_sb_list_lock and use it to protect the list manipulations and traversals. This lock replaces the inode_lock as the inodes on the list can be validity checked while holding the inode->i_lock and hence the inode_lock is no longer needed to protect the list. Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
2011-03-24fs: protect inode->i_state with inode->i_lockDave Chinner
Protect inode state transitions and validity checks with the inode->i_lock. This enables us to make inode state transitions independently of the inode_lock and is the first step to peeling away the inode_lock from the code. This requires that __iget() is done atomically with i_state checks during list traversals so that we don't race with another thread marking the inode I_FREEING between the state check and grabbing the reference. Also remove the unlock_new_inode() memory barrier optimisation required to avoid taking the inode_lock when clearing I_NEW. Simplify the code by simply taking the inode->i_lock around the state change and wakeup. Because the wakeup is no longer tricky, remove the wake_up_inode() function and open code the wakeup where necessary. Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
2011-01-13fs/fs-writeback.c: fix sync_inodes_sb() return value kernel-docStefan Hajnoczi
The sync_inodes_sb() function does not have a return value. Remove the outdated documentation comment. Signed-off-by: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13sync_inode_metadata: fix commentAndrew Morton
Use correct function name, remove incorrect apostrophe Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13writeback: avoid livelocking WB_SYNC_ALL writebackJan Kara
When wb_writeback() is called in WB_SYNC_ALL mode, work->nr_to_write is usually set to LONG_MAX. The logic in wb_writeback() then calls __writeback_inodes_sb() with nr_to_write == MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES and we easily end up with non-positive nr_to_write after the function returns, if the inode has more than MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES dirty pages at the moment. When nr_to_write is <= 0 wb_writeback() decides we need another round of writeback but this is wrong in some cases! For example when a single large file is continuously dirtied, we would never finish syncing it because each pass would be able to write MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES and inode dirty timestamp never gets updated (as inode is never completely clean). Thus __writeback_inodes_sb() would write the redirtied inode again and again. Fix the issue by setting nr_to_write to LONG_MAX in WB_SYNC_ALL mode. We do not need nr_to_write in WB_SYNC_ALL mode anyway since write_cache_pages() does livelock avoidance using page tagging in WB_SYNC_ALL mode. This makes wb_writeback() call __writeback_inodes_sb() only once on WB_SYNC_ALL. The latter function won't livelock because it works on - a finite set of files by doing queue_io() once at the beginning - a finite set of pages by PAGECACHE_TAG_TOWRITE page tagging After this patch, program from http://lkml.org/lkml/2010/10/24/154 is no longer able to stall sync forever. [fengguang.wu@intel.com: fix locking comment] Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Cc: Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@medozas.de> Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13writeback: stop background/kupdate works from livelocking other worksJan Kara
Background writeback is easily livelockable in a loop in wb_writeback() by a process continuously re-dirtying pages (or continuously appending to a file). This is in fact intended as the target of background writeback is to write dirty pages it can find as long as we are over dirty_background_threshold. But the above behavior gets inconvenient at times because no other work queued in the flusher thread's queue gets processed. In particular, since e.g. sync(1) relies on flusher thread to do all the IO for it, sync(1) can hang forever waiting for flusher thread to do the work. Generally, when a flusher thread has some work queued, someone submitted the work to achieve a goal more specific than what background writeback does. Moreover by working on the specific work, we also reduce amount of dirty pages which is exactly the target of background writeout. So it makes sense to give specific work a priority over a generic page cleaning. Thus we interrupt background writeback if there is some other work to do. We return to the background writeback after completing all the queued work. This may delay the writeback of expired inodes for a while, however the expired inodes will eventually be flushed to disk as long as the other works won't livelock. [fengguang.wu@intel.com: update comment] Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Cc: Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@medozas.de> Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13writeback: trace wakeup event for background writebackWu Fengguang
This tracks when balance_dirty_pages() tries to wakeup the flusher thread for background writeback (if it was not started already). Suggested-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Cc: Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@medozas.de> Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2011-01-13writeback: integrated background writeback workJan Kara
Check whether background writeback is needed after finishing each work. When bdi flusher thread finishes doing some work check whether any kind of background writeback needs to be done (either because dirty_background_ratio is exceeded or because we need to start flushing old inodes). If so, just do background write back. This way, bdi_start_background_writeback() just needs to wake up the flusher thread. It will do background writeback as soon as there is no other work. This is a preparatory patch for the next patch which stops background writeback as soon as there is other work to do. Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Cc: Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@medozas.de> Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2010-10-30Merge branch 'for-linus' of ↵Linus Torvalds
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mason/btrfs-unstable * 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mason/btrfs-unstable: (39 commits) Btrfs: deal with errors from updating the tree log Btrfs: allow subvol deletion by unprivileged user with -o user_subvol_rm_allowed Btrfs: make SNAP_DESTROY async Btrfs: add SNAP_CREATE_ASYNC ioctl Btrfs: add START_SYNC, WAIT_SYNC ioctls Btrfs: async transaction commit Btrfs: fix deadlock in btrfs_commit_transaction Btrfs: fix lockdep warning on clone ioctl Btrfs: fix clone ioctl where range is adjacent to extent Btrfs: fix delalloc checks in clone ioctl Btrfs: drop unused variable in block_alloc_rsv Btrfs: cleanup warnings from gcc 4.6 (nonbugs) Btrfs: Fix variables set but not read (bugs found by gcc 4.6) Btrfs: Use ERR_CAST helpers Btrfs: use memdup_user helpers Btrfs: fix raid code for removing missing drives Btrfs: Switch the extent buffer rbtree into a radix tree Btrfs: restructure try_release_extent_buffer() Btrfs: use the flusher threads for delalloc throttling Btrfs: tune the chunk allocation to 5% of the FS as metadata ... Fix up trivial conflicts in fs/btrfs/super.c and fs/fs-writeback.c, and remove use of INIT_RCU_HEAD in fs/btrfs/extent_io.c (that init macro was useless and removed in commit 5e8067adfdba: "rcu head remove init")
2010-10-30fs-writeback.c: unify some common codeLinus Torvalds
The btrfs merge looks like hell, because it changes fs-writeback.c, and the crazy code has this repeated "estimate number of dirty pages" counting that involves three different helper functions. And it's done in two different places. Just unify that whole calculation as a "get_nr_dirty_pages()" helper function, and the merge result will look half-way decent. Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2010-10-29Add new functions for triggering inode writebackChris Mason
When btrfs is running low on metadata space, it needs to force delayed allocation pages to disk. It currently does this with a suboptimal walk of a private list of inodes with delayed allocation, and it would be much better if we used the generic flusher threads. writeback_inodes_sb_if_idle would be ideal, but it waits for the flusher thread to start IO on all the dirty pages in the FS before it returns. This adds variants of writeback_inodes_sb* that allow the caller to control how many pages get sent down. Signed-off-by: Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com>
2010-10-26Merge branch 'for-linus' of ↵Linus Torvalds
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/vfs-2.6 * 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/vfs-2.6: (52 commits) split invalidate_inodes() fs: skip I_FREEING inodes in writeback_sb_inodes fs: fold invalidate_list into invalidate_inodes fs: do not drop inode_lock in dispose_list fs: inode split IO and LRU lists fs: switch bdev inode bdi's correctly fs: fix buffer invalidation in invalidate_list fsnotify: use dget_parent smbfs: use dget_parent exportfs: use dget_parent fs: use RCU read side protection in d_validate fs: clean up dentry lru modification fs: split __shrink_dcache_sb fs: improve DCACHE_REFERENCED usage fs: use percpu counter for nr_dentry and nr_dentry_unused fs: simplify __d_free fs: take dcache_lock inside __d_path fs: do not assign default i_ino in new_inode fs: introduce a per-cpu last_ino allocator new helper: ihold() ...
2010-10-26kernel: remove PF_FLUSHERPeter Zijlstra
PF_FLUSHER is only ever set, not tested, remove it. Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl> Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2010-10-26fs/fs-writeback.c: restore lost commentAndrew Morton
I had to go back to a 2.6.20 tree to work out why we're adding a number-of-inodes into a number-of-pages count. Restore the lost comment. Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2010-10-26writeback: remove the internal 5% low bound on dirty_ratioWu Fengguang
The dirty_ratio was silently limited in global_dirty_limits() to >= 5%. This is not a user expected behavior. And it's inconsistent with calc_period_shift(), which uses the plain vm_dirty_ratio value. Let's remove the internal bound. At the same time, fix balance_dirty_pages() to work with the dirty_thresh=0 case. This allows applications to proceed when dirty+writeback pages are all cleaned. And ">" fits with the name "exceeded" better than ">=" does. Neil thinks it is an aesthetic improvement as well as a functional one :) Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Proposed-by: Con Kolivas <kernel@kolivas.org> Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl> Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Neil Brown <neilb@suse.de> Reviewed-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Michael Rubin <mrubin@google.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2010-10-25fs: skip I_FREEING inodes in writeback_sb_inodesChristoph Hellwig
Skip I_FREEING inodes just like I_WILL_FREE and I_NEW when walking the writeback lists. Currenly this can't happen, but once we move from inode_lock to more fine grained locking we can have an inode that's still on the writeback lists but has I_FREEING set, and we absolutely need to skip it here, just like we do for all other inode list walks. Based on a patch from Dave Chinner. Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
2010-10-25fs: inode split IO and LRU listsNick Piggin
The use of the same inode list structure (inode->i_list) for two different list constructs with different lifecycles and purposes makes it impossible to separate the locking of the different operations. Therefore, to enable the separation of the locking of the writeback and reclaim lists, split the inode->i_list into two separate lists dedicated to their specific tracking functions. Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
2010-10-25fs: Implement lazy LRU updates for inodesNick Piggin
Convert the inode LRU to use lazy updates to reduce lock and cacheline traffic. We avoid moving inodes around in the LRU list during iget/iput operations so these frequent operations don't need to access the LRUs. Instead, we defer the refcount checks to reclaim-time and use a per-inode state flag, I_REFERENCED, to tell reclaim that iget has touched the inode in the past. This means that only reclaim should be touching the LRU with any frequency, hence significantly reducing lock acquisitions and the amount contention on LRU updates. This also removes the inode_in_use list, which means we now only have one list for tracking the inode LRU status. This makes it much simpler to split out the LRU list operations under it's own lock. Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
2010-10-25fs: Convert nr_inodes and nr_unused to per-cpu countersDave Chinner
The number of inodes allocated does not need to be tied to the addition or removal of an inode to/from a list. If we are not tied to a list lock, we could update the counters when inodes are initialised or destroyed, but to do that we need to convert the counters to be per-cpu (i.e. independent of a lock). This means that we have the freedom to change the list/locking implementation without needing to care about the counters. Based on a patch originally from Eric Dumazet. [AV: cleaned up a bit, fixed build breakage on weird configs Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
2010-10-25new helper: inode_unhashed()Al Viro
note: for race-free uses you inode_lock held Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
2010-10-25fs: add sync_inode_metadataChristoph Hellwig
Add a new helper to write out the inode using the writeback code, that is including the correct dirty bit and list manipulation. A few of filesystems already opencode this, and a lot of others should be using it instead of using write_inode_now which also writes out the data. Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
2010-10-04writeback: always use sb->s_bdi for writeback purposesChristoph Hellwig
We currently use struct backing_dev_info for various different purposes. Originally it was introduced to describe a backing device which includes an unplug and congestion function and various bits of readahead information and VM-relevant flags. We're also using for tracking dirty inodes for writeback. To make writeback properly find all inodes we need to only access the per-filesystem backing_device pointed to by the superblock in ->s_bdi inside the writeback code, and not the instances pointeded to by inode->i_mapping->backing_dev which can be overriden by special devices or might not be set at all by some filesystems. Long term we should split out the writeback-relevant bits of struct backing_device_info (which includes more than the current bdi_writeback) and only point to it from the superblock while leaving the traditional backing device as a separate structure that can be overriden by devices. The one exception for now is the block device filesystem which really wants different writeback contexts for it's different (internal) inodes to handle the writeout more efficiently. For now we do this with a hack in fs-writeback.c because we're so late in the cycle, but in the future I plan to replace this with a superblock method that allows for multiple writeback contexts per filesystem. Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jaxboe@fusionio.com>