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).
Cheers,
Dave.
--
Dave Chinner
Principal Engineer
SGI Australian Software Group
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