summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/kernel/Documentation/filesystems/gfs2-glocks.txt
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'kernel/Documentation/filesystems/gfs2-glocks.txt')
-rw-r--r--kernel/Documentation/filesystems/gfs2-glocks.txt231
1 files changed, 231 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/kernel/Documentation/filesystems/gfs2-glocks.txt b/kernel/Documentation/filesystems/gfs2-glocks.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..fcc79957b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/kernel/Documentation/filesystems/gfs2-glocks.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,231 @@
+ Glock internal locking rules
+ ------------------------------
+
+This documents the basic principles of the glock state machine
+internals. Each glock (struct gfs2_glock in fs/gfs2/incore.h)
+has two main (internal) locks:
+
+ 1. A spinlock (gl_spin) which protects the internal state such
+ as gl_state, gl_target and the list of holders (gl_holders)
+ 2. A non-blocking bit lock, GLF_LOCK, which is used to prevent other
+ threads from making calls to the DLM, etc. at the same time. If a
+ thread takes this lock, it must then call run_queue (usually via the
+ workqueue) when it releases it in order to ensure any pending tasks
+ are completed.
+
+The gl_holders list contains all the queued lock requests (not
+just the holders) associated with the glock. If there are any
+held locks, then they will be contiguous entries at the head
+of the list. Locks are granted in strictly the order that they
+are queued, except for those marked LM_FLAG_PRIORITY which are
+used only during recovery, and even then only for journal locks.
+
+There are three lock states that users of the glock layer can request,
+namely shared (SH), deferred (DF) and exclusive (EX). Those translate
+to the following DLM lock modes:
+
+Glock mode | DLM lock mode
+------------------------------
+ UN | IV/NL Unlocked (no DLM lock associated with glock) or NL
+ SH | PR (Protected read)
+ DF | CW (Concurrent write)
+ EX | EX (Exclusive)
+
+Thus DF is basically a shared mode which is incompatible with the "normal"
+shared lock mode, SH. In GFS2 the DF mode is used exclusively for direct I/O
+operations. The glocks are basically a lock plus some routines which deal
+with cache management. The following rules apply for the cache:
+
+Glock mode | Cache data | Cache Metadata | Dirty Data | Dirty Metadata
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------
+ UN | No | No | No | No
+ SH | Yes | Yes | No | No
+ DF | No | Yes | No | No
+ EX | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes
+
+These rules are implemented using the various glock operations which
+are defined for each type of glock. Not all types of glocks use
+all the modes. Only inode glocks use the DF mode for example.
+
+Table of glock operations and per type constants:
+
+Field | Purpose
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------
+go_xmote_th | Called before remote state change (e.g. to sync dirty data)
+go_xmote_bh | Called after remote state change (e.g. to refill cache)
+go_inval | Called if remote state change requires invalidating the cache
+go_demote_ok | Returns boolean value of whether its ok to demote a glock
+ | (e.g. checks timeout, and that there is no cached data)
+go_lock | Called for the first local holder of a lock
+go_unlock | Called on the final local unlock of a lock
+go_dump | Called to print content of object for debugfs file, or on
+ | error to dump glock to the log.
+go_type | The type of the glock, LM_TYPE_.....
+go_callback | Called if the DLM sends a callback to drop this lock
+go_flags | GLOF_ASPACE is set, if the glock has an address space
+ | associated with it
+
+The minimum hold time for each lock is the time after a remote lock
+grant for which we ignore remote demote requests. This is in order to
+prevent a situation where locks are being bounced around the cluster
+from node to node with none of the nodes making any progress. This
+tends to show up most with shared mmaped files which are being written
+to by multiple nodes. By delaying the demotion in response to a
+remote callback, that gives the userspace program time to make
+some progress before the pages are unmapped.
+
+There is a plan to try and remove the go_lock and go_unlock callbacks
+if possible, in order to try and speed up the fast path though the locking.
+Also, eventually we hope to make the glock "EX" mode locally shared
+such that any local locking will be done with the i_mutex as required
+rather than via the glock.
+
+Locking rules for glock operations:
+
+Operation | GLF_LOCK bit lock held | gl_spin spinlock held
+-----------------------------------------------------------------
+go_xmote_th | Yes | No
+go_xmote_bh | Yes | No
+go_inval | Yes | No
+go_demote_ok | Sometimes | Yes
+go_lock | Yes | No
+go_unlock | Yes | No
+go_dump | Sometimes | Yes
+go_callback | Sometimes (N/A) | Yes
+
+N.B. Operations must not drop either the bit lock or the spinlock
+if its held on entry. go_dump and do_demote_ok must never block.
+Note that go_dump will only be called if the glock's state
+indicates that it is caching uptodate data.
+
+Glock locking order within GFS2:
+
+ 1. i_mutex (if required)
+ 2. Rename glock (for rename only)
+ 3. Inode glock(s)
+ (Parents before children, inodes at "same level" with same parent in
+ lock number order)
+ 4. Rgrp glock(s) (for (de)allocation operations)
+ 5. Transaction glock (via gfs2_trans_begin) for non-read operations
+ 6. Page lock (always last, very important!)
+
+There are two glocks per inode. One deals with access to the inode
+itself (locking order as above), and the other, known as the iopen
+glock is used in conjunction with the i_nlink field in the inode to
+determine the lifetime of the inode in question. Locking of inodes
+is on a per-inode basis. Locking of rgrps is on a per rgrp basis.
+In general we prefer to lock local locks prior to cluster locks.
+
+ Glock Statistics
+ ------------------
+
+The stats are divided into two sets: those relating to the
+super block and those relating to an individual glock. The
+super block stats are done on a per cpu basis in order to
+try and reduce the overhead of gathering them. They are also
+further divided by glock type. All timings are in nanoseconds.
+
+In the case of both the super block and glock statistics,
+the same information is gathered in each case. The super
+block timing statistics are used to provide default values for
+the glock timing statistics, so that newly created glocks
+should have, as far as possible, a sensible starting point.
+The per-glock counters are initialised to zero when the
+glock is created. The per-glock statistics are lost when
+the glock is ejected from memory.
+
+The statistics are divided into three pairs of mean and
+variance, plus two counters. The mean/variance pairs are
+smoothed exponential estimates and the algorithm used is
+one which will be very familiar to those used to calculation
+of round trip times in network code. See "TCP/IP Illustrated,
+Volume 1", W. Richard Stevens, sect 21.3, "Round-Trip Time Measurement",
+p. 299 and onwards. Also, Volume 2, Sect. 25.10, p. 838 and onwards.
+Unlike the TCP/IP Illustrated case, the mean and variance are
+not scaled, but are in units of integer nanoseconds.
+
+The three pairs of mean/variance measure the following
+things:
+
+ 1. DLM lock time (non-blocking requests)
+ 2. DLM lock time (blocking requests)
+ 3. Inter-request time (again to the DLM)
+
+A non-blocking request is one which will complete right
+away, whatever the state of the DLM lock in question. That
+currently means any requests when (a) the current state of
+the lock is exclusive, i.e. a lock demotion (b) the requested
+state is either null or unlocked (again, a demotion) or (c) the
+"try lock" flag is set. A blocking request covers all the other
+lock requests.
+
+There are two counters. The first is there primarily to show
+how many lock requests have been made, and thus how much data
+has gone into the mean/variance calculations. The other counter
+is counting queuing of holders at the top layer of the glock
+code. Hopefully that number will be a lot larger than the number
+of dlm lock requests issued.
+
+So why gather these statistics? There are several reasons
+we'd like to get a better idea of these timings:
+
+1. To be able to better set the glock "min hold time"
+2. To spot performance issues more easily
+3. To improve the algorithm for selecting resource groups for
+allocation (to base it on lock wait time, rather than blindly
+using a "try lock")
+
+Due to the smoothing action of the updates, a step change in
+some input quantity being sampled will only fully be taken
+into account after 8 samples (or 4 for the variance) and this
+needs to be carefully considered when interpreting the
+results.
+
+Knowing both the time it takes a lock request to complete and
+the average time between lock requests for a glock means we
+can compute the total percentage of the time for which the
+node is able to use a glock vs. time that the rest of the
+cluster has its share. That will be very useful when setting
+the lock min hold time.
+
+Great care has been taken to ensure that we
+measure exactly the quantities that we want, as accurately
+as possible. There are always inaccuracies in any
+measuring system, but I hope this is as accurate as we
+can reasonably make it.
+
+Per sb stats can be found here:
+/sys/kernel/debug/gfs2/<fsname>/sbstats
+Per glock stats can be found here:
+/sys/kernel/debug/gfs2/<fsname>/glstats
+
+Assuming that debugfs is mounted on /sys/kernel/debug and also
+that <fsname> is replaced with the name of the gfs2 filesystem
+in question.
+
+The abbreviations used in the output as are follows:
+
+srtt - Smoothed round trip time for non-blocking dlm requests
+srttvar - Variance estimate for srtt
+srttb - Smoothed round trip time for (potentially) blocking dlm requests
+srttvarb - Variance estimate for srttb
+sirt - Smoothed inter-request time (for dlm requests)
+sirtvar - Variance estimate for sirt
+dlm - Number of dlm requests made (dcnt in glstats file)
+queue - Number of glock requests queued (qcnt in glstats file)
+
+The sbstats file contains a set of these stats for each glock type (so 8 lines
+for each type) and for each cpu (one column per cpu). The glstats file contains
+a set of these stats for each glock in a similar format to the glocks file, but
+using the format mean/variance for each of the timing stats.
+
+The gfs2_glock_lock_time tracepoint prints out the current values of the stats
+for the glock in question, along with some addition information on each dlm
+reply that is received:
+
+status - The status of the dlm request
+flags - The dlm request flags
+tdiff - The time taken by this specific request
+(remaining fields as per above list)
+
+