Merge branch 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.dk/linux-2.6-block

* 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.dk/linux-2.6-block:
  block: Range check cpu in blk_cpu_to_group
  scatterlist: prevent invalid free when alloc fails
  writeback: Fix lost wake-up shutting down writeback thread
  writeback: do not lose wakeup events when forking bdi threads
  cciss: fix reporting of max queue depth since init
  block: switch s390 tape_block and mg_disk to elevator_change()
  block: add function call to switch the IO scheduler from a driver
  fs/bio-integrity.c: return -ENOMEM on kmalloc failure
  bio-integrity.c: remove dependency on __GFP_NOFAIL
  BLOCK: fix bio.bi_rw handling
  block: put dev->kobj in blk_register_queue fail path
  cciss: handle allocation failure
  cfq-iosched: Documentation help for new tunables
  cfq-iosched: blktrace print per slice sector stats
  cfq-iosched: Implement tunable group_idle
  cfq-iosched: Do group share accounting in IOPS when slice_idle=0
  cfq-iosched: Do not idle if slice_idle=0
  cciss: disable doorbell reset on reset_devices
  blkio: Fix return code for mkdir calls

1 files changed, 45 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/block/cfq-iosched.txt b/Documentation/block/cfq-iosched.txt
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..e578feed6d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/block/cfq-iosched.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
+CFQ ioscheduler tunables
+========================
+
+slice_idle
+----------
+This specifies how long CFQ should idle for next request on certain cfq queues
+(for sequential workloads) and service trees (for random workloads) before
+queue is expired and CFQ selects next queue to dispatch from.
+
+By default slice_idle is a non-zero value. That means by default we idle on
+queues/service trees. This can be very helpful on highly seeky media like
+single spindle SATA/SAS disks where we can cut down on overall number of
+seeks and see improved throughput.
+
+Setting slice_idle to 0 will remove all the idling on queues/service tree
+level and one should see an overall improved throughput on faster storage
+devices like multiple SATA/SAS disks in hardware RAID configuration. The down
+side is that isolation provided from WRITES also goes down and notion of
+IO priority becomes weaker.
+
+So depending on storage and workload, it might be useful to set slice_idle=0.
+In general I think for SATA/SAS disks and software RAID of SATA/SAS disks
+keeping slice_idle enabled should be useful. For any configurations where
+there are multiple spindles behind single LUN (Host based hardware RAID
+controller or for storage arrays), setting slice_idle=0 might end up in better
+throughput and acceptable latencies.
+
+CFQ IOPS Mode for group scheduling
+===================================
+Basic CFQ design is to provide priority based time slices. Higher priority
+process gets bigger time slice and lower priority process gets smaller time
+slice. Measuring time becomes harder if storage is fast and supports NCQ and
+it would be better to dispatch multiple requests from multiple cfq queues in
+request queue at a time. In such scenario, it is not possible to measure time
+consumed by single queue accurately.
+
+What is possible though is to measure number of requests dispatched from a
+single queue and also allow dispatch from multiple cfq queue at the same time.
+This effectively becomes the fairness in terms of IOPS (IO operations per
+second).
+
+If one sets slice_idle=0 and if storage supports NCQ, CFQ internally switches
+to IOPS mode and starts providing fairness in terms of number of requests
+dispatched. Note that this mode switching takes effect only for group
+scheduling. For non-cgroup users nothing should change.