linux/include/trace/events/writeback.h, branch v3.1-rc9

writeback: show raw dirtied_when in trace writeback_single_inode

2011-08-31T00:48:15Z

Save inode->dirtied_when in the raw trace output for reliable scripting, and to also show in formatted output the relative age in seconds for easy human reading. CC: Jan Kara Acked-by: Christoph Hellwig Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang

writeback: trace global_dirty_state

2011-07-10T05:09:03Z

Add trace event balance_dirty_state for showing the global dirty page counts and thresholds at each global_dirty_limits() invocation. This will cover the callers throttle_vm_writeout(), over_bground_thresh() and each balance_dirty_pages() loop. Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang

writeback: make writeback_control.nr_to_write straight

2011-07-10T05:09:01Z

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 Proposed-by: Christoph Hellwig Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang

writeback: trace event writeback_queue_io

2011-06-08T00:25:23Z

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

writeback: trace event writeback_single_inode

2011-06-08T00:25:23Z

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 Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang

writeback: remove writeback_control.more_io

2011-06-08T00:25:23Z

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 Acked-by: Mel Gorman Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang

writeback: trace wakeup event for background writeback

2011-01-14T01:32:32Z

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 Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang Cc: Jan Kara Cc: Johannes Weiner Cc: Dave Chinner Cc: Jan Engelhardt Cc: Jens Axboe Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

writeback: do not sleep on the congestion queue if there are no congested BDIs or if significant congestion is not being encountered in the current zone

2010-10-26T23:52:07Z

If congestion_wait() is called with no BDI congested, the caller will sleep for the full timeout and this may be an unnecessary sleep. This patch adds a wait_iff_congested() that checks congestion and only sleeps if a BDI is congested else, it calls cond_resched() to ensure the caller is not hogging the CPU longer than its quota but otherwise will not sleep. This is aimed at reducing some of the major desktop stalls reported during IO. For example, while kswapd is operating, it calls congestion_wait() but it could just have been reclaiming clean page cache pages with no congestion. Without this patch, it would sleep for a full timeout but after this patch, it'll just call schedule() if it has been on the CPU too long. Similar logic applies to direct reclaimers that are not making enough progress. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman Cc: Johannes Weiner Cc: Minchan Kim Cc: Wu Fengguang Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro Cc: Rik van Riel Cc: Jens Axboe Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

writeback: account for time spent congestion_waited

2010-10-26T23:52:07Z

There is strong evidence to indicate a lot of time is being spent in congestion_wait(), some of it unnecessarily. This patch adds a tracepoint for congestion_wait to record when congestion_wait() was called, how long the timeout was for and how long it actually slept. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim Reviewed-by: Johannes Weiner Cc: Wu Fengguang Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro Cc: Rik van Riel Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

writeback: remove nonblocking/encountered_congestion references

2010-10-26T23:52:05Z

This removes more dead code that was somehow missed by commit 0d99519efef (writeback: remove unused nonblocking and congestion checks). There are no behavior change except for the removal of two entries from one of the ext4 tracing interface. The nonblocking checks in ->writepages are no longer used because the flusher now prefer to block on get_request_wait() than to skip inodes on IO congestion. The latter will lead to more seeky IO. The nonblocking checks in ->writepage are no longer used because it's redundant with the WB_SYNC_NONE check. We no long set ->nonblocking in VM page out and page migration, because a) it's effectively redundant with WB_SYNC_NONE in current code b) it's old semantic of "Don't get stuck on request queues" is mis-behavior: that would skip some dirty inodes on congestion and page out others, which is unfair in terms of LRU age. Inspired by Christoph Hellwig. Thanks! Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang Cc: Theodore Ts'o Cc: David Howells Cc: Sage Weil Cc: Steve French Cc: Chris Mason Cc: Jens Axboe Cc: Christoph Hellwig Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds