Hi,
On Thursday, 26 October 2006 10:57, David Chinner wrote:
> Hi Nigel,
>
> On Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 06:18:29PM +1000, Nigel Cunningham wrote:
> > On Thu, 2006-10-26 at 17:30 +1000, David Chinner wrote:
> > > We have daemons running in the background that can definitely do stuff
> > > after a sync. hmm - one does try_to_freeze() after a wakeup, the
> > > other does:
> > >
> > > if (unlikely(freezing(current))) {
> > > set_bit(XBT_FORCE_SLEEP, &target->bt_flags);
> > > refrigerator();
> > > } else {
> > > clear_bit(XBT_FORCE_SLEEP, &target->bt_flags);
> > > }
> > >
> > > before it goes to sleep. So that one (xfsbufd - metadata buffer flushing)
> > > can definitely wake up after the sync and do work, and the other could if
> > > the kernel thread freeze occurs after the sync.
> > >
> > > Another good question at this point - exactly how should we be putting
> > > these thread to to sleep? Are both these valid methods for freezing them?
> > > And should we be freezing when we wake up instead of before we go to
> > > sleep? i.e. what are teh rules we are supposed to be following?
> >
> > As you have them at the moment, the threads seem to be freezing fine.
> > The issue I've seen in the past related not to threads but to timer
> > based activity. Admittedly it was 2.6.14 when I last looked at it, but
> > there used to be a possibility for XFS to submit I/O from a timer when
> > the threads are frozen but the bdev isn't frozen. Has that changed?
>
> I didn't think we've ever done that - periodic or delayed operations
> are passed off to the kernel threads to execute. A stack trace
> (if you still have it) would be really help here.
>
> Hmmm - we have a couple of per-cpu work queues as well that are
> used on I/O completion and that can, in some circumstances,
> trigger new transactions. If we are only flush metadata, then
> I don't think that any more I/o will be issued, but I could be
> wrong (maze of twisty passages).
Well, I think this exactly is the problem, because worker_threads run with
PF_NOFREEZE set (as I've just said in another message).
Greetings,
Rafael
--
You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
R. Buckminster Fuller
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