linux-toradex.git/mm/backing-dev.c, branch v3.14.3

bdi: avoid oops on device removal

2014-04-27T00:19:05+00:00

commit 5acda9d12dcf1ad0d9a5a2a7c646de3472fa7555 upstream.

After commit 839a8e8660b6 ("writeback: replace custom worker pool
implementation with unbound workqueue") when device is removed while we
are writing to it we crash in bdi_writeback_workfn() ->
set_worker_desc() because bdi->dev is NULL.

This can happen because even though bdi_unregister() cancels all pending
flushing work, nothing really prevents new ones from being queued from
balance_dirty_pages() or other places.

Fix the problem by clearing BDI_registered bit in bdi_unregister() and
checking it before scheduling of any flushing work.

Fixes: 839a8e8660b6777e7fe4e80af1a048aebe2b5977

Reviewed-by: Tejun Heo 
Signed-off-by: Jan Kara 
Cc: Derek Basehore 
Cc: Jens Axboe 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds 
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

backing_dev: fix hung task on sync

2014-04-27T00:19:05+00:00

commit 6ca738d60c563d5c6cf6253ee4b8e76fa77b2b9e upstream.

bdi_wakeup_thread_delayed() used the mod_delayed_work() function to
schedule work to writeback dirty inodes.  The problem with this is that
it can delay work that is scheduled for immediate execution, such as the
work from sync_inodes_sb().  This can happen since mod_delayed_work()
can now steal work from a work_queue.  This fixes the problem by using
queue_delayed_work() instead.  This is a regression caused by commit
839a8e8660b6 ("writeback: replace custom worker pool implementation with
unbound workqueue").

The reason that this causes a problem is that laptop-mode will change
the delay, dirty_writeback_centisecs, to 60000 (10 minutes) by default.
In the case that bdi_wakeup_thread_delayed() races with
sync_inodes_sb(), sync will be stopped for 10 minutes and trigger a hung
task.  Even if dirty_writeback_centisecs is not long enough to cause a
hung task, we still don't want to delay sync for that long.

We fix the problem by using queue_delayed_work() when we want to
schedule writeback sometime in future.  This function doesn't change the
timer if it is already armed.

For the same reason, we also change bdi_writeback_workfn() to
immediately queue the work again in the case that the work_list is not
empty.  The same problem can happen if the sync work is run on the
rescue worker.

[jack@suse.cz: update changelog, add comment, use bdi_wakeup_thread_delayed()]
Signed-off-by: Derek Basehore 
Reviewed-by: Jan Kara 
Cc: Alexander Viro 
Reviewed-by: Tejun Heo 
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman 
Cc: "Darrick J. Wong" 
Cc: Derek Basehore 
Cc: Kees Cook 
Cc: Benson Leung 
Cc: Sonny Rao 
Cc: Luigi Semenzato 
Cc: Jens Axboe 
Cc: Dave Chinner 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds 
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

mm/backing-dev.c: check user buffer length before copying data to the related user buffer

2013-09-11T22:58:03+00:00

'*lenp' may be less than "sizeof(kbuf)" so we must check this before the
next copy_to_user().

pdflush_proc_obsolete() is called by sysctl which 'procname' is
"nr_pdflush_threads", if the user passes buffer length less than
"sizeof(kbuf)", it will cause issue.

Signed-off-by: Chen Gang 
Reviewed-by: Jan Kara 
Cc: Tejun Heo 
Cc: Jeff Moyer 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

backing-dev: convert class code to use dev_groups

2013-08-20T04:22:34+00:00

The dev_attrs field of struct class is going away soon, dev_groups
should be used instead.  This converts the backing device class code to
use the correct field.

Cc: Andrew Morton 
Cc: Jan Kara 
Cc: Tejun Heo 
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

sysfs.h: add __ATTR_RW() macro

2013-07-16T17:57:36+00:00

A number of parts of the kernel created their own version of this, might
as well have the sysfs core provide it instead.

Reviewed-by: Guenter Roeck 
Tested-by: Guenter Roeck 
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

drivers: avoid format string in dev_set_name

2013-07-03T23:07:41+00:00

Calling dev_set_name with a single paramter causes it to be handled as a
format string.  Many callers are passing potentially dynamic string
content, so use "%s" in those cases to avoid any potential accidents,
including wrappers like device_create*() and bdi_register().

Signed-off-by: Kees Cook 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

writeback: expose the bdi_wq workqueue

2013-04-02T02:08:06+00:00

There are cases where userland wants to tweak the priority and
affinity of writeback flushers.  Expose bdi_wq to userland by setting
WQ_SYSFS.  It appears under /sys/bus/workqueue/devices/writeback/ and
allows adjusting maximum concurrency level, cpumask and nice level.

Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo 
Cc: Jens Axboe 
Cc: Fengguang Wu 
Cc: Jeff Moyer 
Cc: Kay Sievers 
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman

writeback: replace custom worker pool implementation with unbound workqueue

2013-04-02T02:08:06+00:00

Writeback implements its own worker pool - each bdi can be associated
with a worker thread which is created and destroyed dynamically.  The
worker thread for the default bdi is always present and serves as the
"forker" thread which forks off worker threads for other bdis.

there's no reason for writeback to implement its own worker pool when
using unbound workqueue instead is much simpler and more efficient.
This patch replaces custom worker pool implementation in writeback
with an unbound workqueue.

The conversion isn't too complicated but the followings are worth
mentioning.

* bdi_writeback->last_active, task and wakeup_timer are removed.
  delayed_work ->dwork is added instead.  Explicit timer handling is
  no longer necessary.  Everything works by either queueing / modding
  / flushing / canceling the delayed_work item.

* bdi_writeback_thread() becomes bdi_writeback_workfn() which runs off
  bdi_writeback->dwork.  On each execution, it processes
  bdi->work_list and reschedules itself if there are more things to
  do.

  The function also handles low-mem condition, which used to be
  handled by the forker thread.  If the function is running off a
  rescuer thread, it only writes out limited number of pages so that
  the rescuer can serve other bdis too.  This preserves the flusher
  creation failure behavior of the forker thread.

* INIT_LIST_HEAD(&bdi->bdi_list) is used to tell
  bdi_writeback_workfn() about on-going bdi unregistration so that it
  always drains work_list even if it's running off the rescuer.  Note
  that the original code was broken in this regard.  Under memory
  pressure, a bdi could finish unregistration with non-empty
  work_list.

* The default bdi is no longer special.  It now is treated the same as
  any other bdi and bdi_cap_flush_forker() is removed.

* BDI_pending is no longer used.  Removed.

* Some tracepoints become non-applicable.  The following TPs are
  removed - writeback_nothread, writeback_wake_thread,
  writeback_wake_forker_thread, writeback_thread_start,
  writeback_thread_stop.

Everything, including devices coming and going away and rescuer
operation under simulated memory pressure, seems to work fine in my
test setup.

Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo 
Reviewed-by: Jan Kara 
Cc: Jens Axboe 
Cc: Fengguang Wu 
Cc: Jeff Moyer

writeback: remove unused bdi_pending_list

2013-04-02T02:08:06+00:00

There's no user left.  Remove it.

Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo 
Reviewed-by: Jan Kara 
Cc: Jens Axboe 
Cc: Fengguang Wu

bdi: allow block devices to say that they require stable page writes

2013-02-22T01:22:19+00:00

This patchset ("stable page writes, part 2") makes some key
modifications to the original 'stable page writes' patchset.  First, it
provides creators (devices and filesystems) of a backing_dev_info a flag
that declares whether or not it is necessary to ensure that page
contents cannot change during writeout.  It is no longer assumed that
this is true of all devices (which was never true anyway).  Second, the
flag is used to relaxed the wait_on_page_writeback calls so that wait
only occurs if the device needs it.  Third, it fixes up the remaining
disk-backed filesystems to use this improved conditional-wait logic to
provide stable page writes on those filesystems.

It is hoped that (for people not using checksumming devices, anyway)
this patchset will give back unnecessary performance decreases since the
original stable page write patchset went into 3.0.  Sorry about not
fixing it sooner.

Complaints were registered by several people about the long write
latencies introduced by the original stable page write patchset.
Generally speaking, the kernel ought to allocate as little extra memory
as possible to facilitate writeout, but for people who simply cannot
wait, a second page stability strategy is (re)introduced: snapshotting
page contents.  The waiting behavior is still the default strategy; to
enable page snapshotting, a superblock flag (MS_SNAP_STABLE) must be
set.  This flag is used to bandaid^Henable stable page writeback on
ext3[1], and is not used anywhere else.

Given that there are already a few storage devices and network FSes that
have rolled their own page stability wait/page snapshot code, it would
be nice to move towards consolidating all of these.  It seems possible
that iscsi and raid5 may wish to use the new stable page write support
to enable zero-copy writeout.

Thank you to Jan Kara for helping fix a couple more filesystems.

Per Andrew Morton's request, here are the result of using dbench to measure
latencies on ext2:

3.8.0-rc3:
   Operation      Count    AvgLat    MaxLat
   ----------------------------------------
   WriteX        109347     0.028    59.817
   ReadX         347180     0.004     3.391
   Flush          15514    29.828   287.283

  Throughput 57.429 MB/sec  4 clients  4 procs  max_latency=287.290 ms

3.8.0-rc3 + patches:
   WriteX        105556     0.029     4.273
   ReadX         335004     0.005     4.112
   Flush          14982    30.540   298.634

  Throughput 55.4496 MB/sec  4 clients  4 procs  max_latency=298.650 ms

As you can see, for ext2 the maximum write latency decreases from ~60ms
on a laptop hard disk to ~4ms.  I'm not sure why the flush latencies
increase, though I suspect that being able to dirty pages faster gives
the flusher more work to do.

On ext4, the average write latency decreases as well as all the maximum
latencies:

3.8.0-rc3:
   WriteX         85624     0.152    33.078
   ReadX         272090     0.010    61.210
   Flush          12129    36.219   168.260

  Throughput 44.8618 MB/sec  4 clients  4 procs  max_latency=168.276 ms

3.8.0-rc3 + patches:
   WriteX         86082     0.141    30.928
   ReadX         273358     0.010    36.124
   Flush          12214    34.800   165.689

  Throughput 44.9941 MB/sec  4 clients  4 procs  max_latency=165.722 ms

XFS seems to exhibit similar latency improvements as ext2:

3.8.0-rc3:
   WriteX        125739     0.028   104.343
   ReadX         399070     0.005     4.115
   Flush          17851    25.004   131.390

  Throughput 66.0024 MB/sec  4 clients  4 procs  max_latency=131.406 ms

3.8.0-rc3 + patches:
   WriteX        123529     0.028     6.299
   ReadX         392434     0.005     4.287
   Flush          17549    25.120   188.687

  Throughput 64.9113 MB/sec  4 clients  4 procs  max_latency=188.704 ms

...and btrfs, just to round things out, also shows some latency
decreases:

3.8.0-rc3:
   WriteX         67122     0.083    82.355
   ReadX         212719     0.005     2.828
   Flush           9547    47.561   147.418

  Throughput 35.3391 MB/sec  4 clients  4 procs  max_latency=147.433 ms

3.8.0-rc3 + patches:
   WriteX         64898     0.101    71.631
   ReadX         206673     0.005     7.123
   Flush           9190    47.963   219.034

  Throughput 34.0795 MB/sec  4 clients  4 procs  max_latency=219.044 ms

Before this patchset, all filesystems would block, regardless of whether
or not it was necessary.  ext3 would wait, but still generate occasional
checksum errors.  The network filesystems were left to do their own
thing, so they'd wait too.

After this patchset, all the disk filesystems except ext3 and btrfs will
wait only if the hardware requires it.  ext3 (if necessary) snapshots
pages instead of blocking, and btrfs provides its own bdi so the mm will
never wait.  Network filesystems haven't been touched, so either they
provide their own wait code, or they don't block at all.  The blocking
behavior is back to what it was before 3.0 if you don't have a disk
requiring stable page writes.

This patchset has been tested on 3.8.0-rc3 on x64 with ext3, ext4, and
xfs.  I've spot-checked 3.8.0-rc4 and seem to be getting the same
results as -rc3.

[1] The alternative fixes to ext3 include fixing the locking order and
page bit handling like we did for ext4 (but then why not just use
ext4?), or setting PG_writeback so early that ext3 becomes extremely
slow.  I tried that, but the number of write()s I could initiate dropped
by nearly an order of magnitude.  That was a bit much even for the
author of the stable page series! :)

This patch:

Creates a per-backing-device flag that tracks whether or not pages must
be held immutable during writeout.  Eventually it will be used to waive
wait_for_page_writeback() if nothing requires stable pages.

Signed-off-by: Darrick J. Wong 
Reviewed-by: Jan Kara 
Cc: Adrian Hunter 
Cc: Andy Lutomirski 
Cc: Artem Bityutskiy 
Cc: Joel Becker 
Cc: Mark Fasheh 
Cc: Steven Whitehouse 
Cc: Jens Axboe 
Cc: Eric Van Hensbergen 
Cc: Ron Minnich 
Cc: Latchesar Ionkov 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds