Hi Jörn,
I understand the problem that you describe with respect to the GC, but
let me explain why I think that it has a small impact on DualFS.
Actually, the GC may become a problem when the number of free segments is
50% or less. If your LFS always guarantees, at least, 50% of free
"segments" (note that I am talking about segments, not free space), the
deadlock problem disappears, right? This is a quite naive solution, but it
works.
In a traditional LFS, with data and meta-data blocks, 50% of free segments
represents a huge amount of wasted disk space. But, in DualFS, 50% of free
segments in the meta-data device is not too much. In a typical Ext2,
or Ext3 file system, there are 20 data blocks for every meta-data block
(that is, meta-data blocks are 5% of the disk blocks used by files).
Since files are implemented in DualFS in the same way, we can suppose the
same ratio for DualFS (1).
Now, let us assume that the data device takes 90% of the disk space, and
the meta-data device the other 10%. When the data device gets full, the
meta-data blocks will be using the half of the meta-data device, and the
other half (5% of the entire disk) will be free. Frankly, 5% is not too
much.
Remember, I am supposing a naive implementation of the cleaner. With a
cleverer one, the meta-data device can be smaller, and the amount of
disk space finally wasted can be smaller too. The following paper proposes
some improvements:
- Jeanna Neefe Matthews, Drew Roselli, Adam Costello, Randy Wang, and
Thomas Anderson. "Improving the Performance of Log-structured File
Systems with Adaptive Methods". Proc. Sixteenth ACM Symposium on
Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), October 1997, pages 238 - 251.
BTW, I think that what they propose is very similar to the two-strategies
GC that you propose in a separate e-mail.
The point of all the above is that you must improve the common case, and
manage the worst case correctly. And that is the idea behind DualFS :)
Regards,
Juan.
(1) DualFS can also use extents to implement regular files, so the ratio
of data blocks with respect to meta-data blocks can be greater.
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007, [utf-8] Jörn Engel wrote:
On Sat, 17 February 2007 15:47:01 -0500, Sorin Faibish wrote:
DualFS can probably get around this corner case as it is up to the user
to select the size of the MD device size. If you want to prevent this
corner case you can always use a device bigger than 10% of the data device
which is exagerate for any FS assuming that the directory files are so
large (this is when you have billions of files with long names).
In general the problem you mention is mainly due to the data blocks
filling the file system. In DualFS case you have the choice of selecting
different sizes for the MD and Data volume. When Data volume gets full
the GC will have a problem but the MD device will not have a problem.
It is my understanding that most of the GC problem you mention is
due to the filling of the FS with data and the result is a MD operation
being disrupted by the filling of the FS with data blocks. As about the
performance impact on solving this problem, as you mentioned all
journal FSs will have this problem, I am sure that DualFS performance
impact will be less than others at least due to using only one MD
write instead of 2.
You seem to make the usual mistakes when people start to think about
this problem. But I could misinterpret you, so let me paraphrase your
mail in questions and answer what I believe you said.
Q: Are journaling filesystems identical to log-structured filesystems?
Not quite. Journaling filesystems usually have a very small journal (or
log, same thing) and only store the information necessary for atomic
transactions in the journal. Not sure what a "journal FS" is, but the
name seems closer to a journaling filesystem.
Q: DualFS seperates Data and Metadata. Does that make a difference?
Not really. What I called "data" in my previous mail is a
log-structured filesystems view of data. DualFS stored file content
seperately, so from an lfs view, that doesn't even exist. But directory
content exists and behaves just like file content wrt. the deadlock
problem. Any data or metadata that cannot be GC'd by simply copying but
requires writing further information like indirect blocks, B-Tree nodes,
etc. will cause the problem.
Q: If the user simply reserves some extra space, does the problem go
away?
Definitely not. It will be harder to hit, but a rare deadlock is still
a deadlock. Again, this is only concerned with the log-structured part
of DualFS, so we can ignore the Data volume.
When data is spread perfectly across all segments, the best segment one
can pick for GC is just as bad as the worst. So let us take some
examples. If 50% of the lfs is free, you can pick a 50% segment for GC.
Writing every single block in it may require writing one additional
indirect block, so GC is required to write out a 100% segment. It
doesn't make any progress at 50% (in a worst case scenario) and could
deadlock if less than 50% were free.
If, however, GC has to write out a singly and a doubly indirect block,
67% of the lfs need to be free. In general, if the maximum height of
your tree is N, you need (N-1)/N * 100% free space. Most people refer
to that as "too much".
If you have less free space, the filesystem will work just fine "most of
the time". That is nice and cool, but it won't help your rare user that
happens to hit the rare deadlock. Any lfs needs a strategy to prevent
this deadlock for good, not just make it mildly unlikely.
Jörn
--
D. Juan Piernas Cánovas
Departamento de Ingeniería y Tecnología de Computadores
Facultad de Informática. Universidad de Murcia
Campus de Espinardo - 30080 Murcia (SPAIN)
Tel.: +34968367657 Fax: +34968364151
email: [email protected]
PGP public key:
http://pgp.rediris.es:11371/pks/lookup?search=piernas%40ditec.um.es&op=index
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