diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'kernel/Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | kernel/Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt | 109 |
1 files changed, 85 insertions, 24 deletions
diff --git a/kernel/Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt b/kernel/Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt index cd556b914..52fa9f353 100644 --- a/kernel/Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt +++ b/kernel/Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt @@ -59,7 +59,7 @@ cgroups. Here is what you can do. - At macro level, first dd should finish first. To get more precise data, keep on looking at (with the help of script), at blkio.disk_time and blkio.disk_sectors files of both test1 and test2 groups. This will tell how - much disk time (in milli seconds), each group got and how many secotors each + much disk time (in milliseconds), each group got and how many sectors each group dispatched to the disk. We provide fairness in terms of disk time, so ideally io.disk_time of cgroups should be in proportion to the weight. @@ -201,7 +201,7 @@ Proportional weight policy files specifies the number of bytes. - blkio.io_serviced - - Number of IOs completed to/from the disk by the group. These + - Number of IOs (bio) issued to the disk by the group. These are further divided by the type of operation - read or write, sync or async. First two fields specify the major and minor number of the device, third field specifies the operation type and the fourth field @@ -327,18 +327,11 @@ Note: If both BW and IOPS rules are specified for a device, then IO is subjected to both the constraints. - blkio.throttle.io_serviced - - Number of IOs (bio) completed to/from the disk by the group (as - seen by throttling policy). These are further divided by the type - of operation - read or write, sync or async. First two fields specify - the major and minor number of the device, third field specifies the - operation type and the fourth field specifies the number of IOs. - - blkio.io_serviced does accounting as seen by CFQ and counts are in - number of requests (struct request). On the other hand, - blkio.throttle.io_serviced counts number of IO in terms of number - of bios as seen by throttling policy. These bios can later be - merged by elevator and total number of requests completed can be - lesser. + - Number of IOs (bio) issued to the disk by the group. These + are further divided by the type of operation - read or write, sync + or async. First two fields specify the major and minor number of the + device, third field specifies the operation type and the fourth field + specifies the number of IOs. - blkio.throttle.io_service_bytes - Number of bytes transferred to/from the disk by the group. These @@ -347,11 +340,6 @@ Note: If both BW and IOPS rules are specified for a device, then IO is device, third field specifies the operation type and the fourth field specifies the number of bytes. - These numbers should roughly be same as blkio.io_service_bytes as - updated by CFQ. The difference between two is that - blkio.io_service_bytes will not be updated if CFQ is not operating - on request queue. - Common files among various policies ----------------------------------- - blkio.reset_stats @@ -387,8 +375,81 @@ groups and put applications in that group which are not driving enough IO to keep disk busy. In that case set group_idle=0, and CFQ will not idle on individual groups and throughput should improve. -What works -========== -- Currently only sync IO queues are support. All the buffered writes are - still system wide and not per group. Hence we will not see service - differentiation between buffered writes between groups. +Writeback +========= + +Page cache is dirtied through buffered writes and shared mmaps and +written asynchronously to the backing filesystem by the writeback +mechanism. Writeback sits between the memory and IO domains and +regulates the proportion of dirty memory by balancing dirtying and +write IOs. + +On traditional cgroup hierarchies, relationships between different +controllers cannot be established making it impossible for writeback +to operate accounting for cgroup resource restrictions and all +writeback IOs are attributed to the root cgroup. + +If both the blkio and memory controllers are used on the v2 hierarchy +and the filesystem supports cgroup writeback, writeback operations +correctly follow the resource restrictions imposed by both memory and +blkio controllers. + +Writeback examines both system-wide and per-cgroup dirty memory status +and enforces the more restrictive of the two. Also, writeback control +parameters which are absolute values - vm.dirty_bytes and +vm.dirty_background_bytes - are distributed across cgroups according +to their current writeback bandwidth. + +There's a peculiarity stemming from the discrepancy in ownership +granularity between memory controller and writeback. While memory +controller tracks ownership per page, writeback operates on inode +basis. cgroup writeback bridges the gap by tracking ownership by +inode but migrating ownership if too many foreign pages, pages which +don't match the current inode ownership, have been encountered while +writing back the inode. + +This is a conscious design choice as writeback operations are +inherently tied to inodes making strictly following page ownership +complicated and inefficient. The only use case which suffers from +this compromise is multiple cgroups concurrently dirtying disjoint +regions of the same inode, which is an unlikely use case and decided +to be unsupported. Note that as memory controller assigns page +ownership on the first use and doesn't update it until the page is +released, even if cgroup writeback strictly follows page ownership, +multiple cgroups dirtying overlapping areas wouldn't work as expected. +In general, write-sharing an inode across multiple cgroups is not well +supported. + +Filesystem support for cgroup writeback +--------------------------------------- + +A filesystem can make writeback IOs cgroup-aware by updating +address_space_operations->writepage[s]() to annotate bio's using the +following two functions. + +* wbc_init_bio(@wbc, @bio) + + Should be called for each bio carrying writeback data and associates + the bio with the inode's owner cgroup. Can be called anytime + between bio allocation and submission. + +* wbc_account_io(@wbc, @page, @bytes) + + Should be called for each data segment being written out. While + this function doesn't care exactly when it's called during the + writeback session, it's the easiest and most natural to call it as + data segments are added to a bio. + +With writeback bio's annotated, cgroup support can be enabled per +super_block by setting MS_CGROUPWB in ->s_flags. This allows for +selective disabling of cgroup writeback support which is helpful when +certain filesystem features, e.g. journaled data mode, are +incompatible. + +wbc_init_bio() binds the specified bio to its cgroup. Depending on +the configuration, the bio may be executed at a lower priority and if +the writeback session is holding shared resources, e.g. a journal +entry, may lead to priority inversion. There is no one easy solution +for the problem. Filesystems can try to work around specific problem +cases by skipping wbc_init_bio() or using bio_associate_blkcg() +directly. |