We can starve out the transaction commit with a bunch of caching threads all
running at the same time. This is because we will only drop the
extent_commit_sem if we need_resched(), which isn't likely to happen since we
will be reading a lot from the disk so have already schedule()'ed plenty. Alex
observed that he could starve out a transaction commit for up to a minute with
32 caching threads all running at once. This will allow us to drop the
extent_commit_sem to allow the transaction commit to swap the commit_root out
and then all the cachers will start back up. Here is an explanation provided by
Igno
So, just to fill in what happens in this loop:
mutex_unlock(&caching_ctl->mutex);
cond_resched();
goto again;
where 'again:' takes caching_ctl->mutex and fs_info->extent_commit_sem
again:
again:
mutex_lock(&caching_ctl->mutex);
/* need to make sure the commit_root doesn't disappear */
down_read(&fs_info->extent_commit_sem);
So, if I'm reading the code correct, there can be a fair amount of
concurrency here: there may be multiple 'caching kthreads' per filesystem
active, while there's one fs_info->extent_commit_sem per filesystem
AFAICS.
So, what happens if there are a lot of CPUs all busy holding the
->extent_commit_sem rwsem read-locked and a writer arrives? They'd all
rush to try to release the fs_info->extent_commit_sem, and they'd block in
the down_read() because there's a writer waiting.
So there's a guarantee of forward progress. This should answer akpm's
concern I think.
Thanks,
Acked-by: Ingo Molnar <mi...@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josef Bacik <jba...@fusionio.com>
---
fs/btrfs/extent-tree.c | 3 ++-
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/fs/btrfs/extent-tree.c b/fs/btrfs/extent-tree.c
index cfb3cf7..cc074c34 100644
--- a/fs/btrfs/extent-tree.c
+++ b/fs/btrfs/extent-tree.c
@@ -442,7 +442,8 @@ next:
if (ret)
break;
- if (need_resched()) {
+ if (need_resched() ||
+ rwsem_is_contended(&fs_info->extent_commit_sem)) {
caching_ctl->progress = last;
btrfs_release_path(path);
up_read(&fs_info->extent_commit_sem);
--
1.8.3.1
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