xfs: always do log forces via the workqueue

Log forces can occur deep in the call chain when we have relatively
little stack free. Log forces can also happen at close to the call
chain leaves (e.g. xfs_buf_lock()) and hence we can trigger IO from
places where we really don't want to add more stack overhead.

This stack overhead occurs because log forces do foreground CIL
pushes (xlog_cil_push_foreground()) rather than waking the
background push wq and waiting for the for the push to complete.
This foreground push was done to avoid confusing the CFQ Io
scheduler when fsync()s were issued, as it has trouble dealing with
dependent IOs being issued from different process contexts.

Avoiding blowing the stack is much more critical than performance
optimisations for CFQ, especially as we've been recommending against
the use of CFQ for XFS since 3.2 kernels were release because of
it's problems with multi-threaded IO workloads.

Hence convert xlog_cil_push_foreground() to move the push work
to the CIL workqueue. We already do the waiting for the push to
complete in xlog_cil_force_lsn(), so there's nothing else we need to
modify to make this work.

Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Brian Foster <bfoster@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>

1 files changed, 39 insertions, 13 deletions

diff --git a/fs/xfs/xfs_log_cil.c b/fs/xfs/xfs_log_cil.c
index cdebd832c3db..1270ded7610d 100644
--- a/fs/xfs/xfs_log_cil.c
+++ b/fs/xfs/xfs_log_cil.c
@@ -488,13 +488,6 @@ xlog_cil_push(
 	cil->xc_ctx = new_ctx;
 
 	/*
-	 * mirror the new sequence into the cil structure so that we can do
-	 * unlocked checks against the current sequence in log forces without
-	 * risking deferencing a freed context pointer.
-	 */
-	cil->xc_current_sequence = new_ctx->sequence;
-
-	/*
 	 * The switch is now done, so we can drop the context lock and move out
 	 * of a shared context. We can't just go straight to the commit record,
 	 * though - we need to synchronise with previous and future commits so
@@ -512,8 +505,15 @@ xlog_cil_push(
 	 * Hence we need to add this context to the committing context list so
 	 * that higher sequences will wait for us to write out a commit record
 	 * before they do.
+	 *
+	 * xfs_log_force_lsn requires us to mirror the new sequence into the cil
+	 * structure atomically with the addition of this sequence to the
+	 * committing list. This also ensures that we can do unlocked checks
+	 * against the current sequence in log forces without risking
+	 * deferencing a freed context pointer.
 	 */
 	spin_lock(&cil->xc_push_lock);
+	cil->xc_current_sequence = new_ctx->sequence;
 	list_add(&ctx->committing, &cil->xc_committing);
 	spin_unlock(&cil->xc_push_lock);
 	up_write(&cil->xc_ctx_lock);
@@ -651,8 +651,14 @@ xlog_cil_push_background(
 
 }
 
+/*
+ * xlog_cil_push_now() is used to trigger an immediate CIL push to the sequence
+ * number that is passed. When it returns, the work will be queued for
+ * @push_seq, but it won't be completed. The caller is expected to do any
+ * waiting for push_seq to complete if it is required.
+ */
 static void
-xlog_cil_push_foreground(
+xlog_cil_push_now(
 	struct xlog	*log,
 	xfs_lsn_t	push_seq)
 {
@@ -677,10 +683,8 @@ xlog_cil_push_foreground(
 	}
 
 	cil->xc_push_seq = push_seq;
+	queue_work(log->l_mp->m_cil_workqueue, &cil->xc_push_work);
 	spin_unlock(&cil->xc_push_lock);
-
-	/* do the push now */
-	xlog_cil_push(log);
 }
 
 bool
@@ -785,7 +789,8 @@ xlog_cil_force_lsn(
 	 * xlog_cil_push() handles racing pushes for the same sequence,
 	 * so no need to deal with it here.
 	 */
-	xlog_cil_push_foreground(log, sequence);
+restart:
+	xlog_cil_push_now(log, sequence);
 
 	/*
 	 * See if we can find a previous sequence still committing.
@@ -793,7 +798,6 @@ xlog_cil_force_lsn(
 	 * before allowing the force of push_seq to go ahead. Hence block
 	 * on commits for those as well.
 	 */
-restart:
 	spin_lock(&cil->xc_push_lock);
 	list_for_each_entry(ctx, &cil->xc_committing, committing) {
 		if (ctx->sequence > sequence)
@@ -811,6 +815,28 @@ restart:
 		/* found it! */
 		commit_lsn = ctx->commit_lsn;
 	}
+
+	/*
+	 * The call to xlog_cil_push_now() executes the push in the background.
+	 * Hence by the time we have got here it our sequence may not have been
+	 * pushed yet. This is true if the current sequence still matches the
+	 * push sequence after the above wait loop and the CIL still contains
+	 * dirty objects.
+	 *
+	 * When the push occurs, it will empty the CIL and
+	 * atomically increment the currect sequence past the push sequence and
+	 * move it into the committing list. Of course, if the CIL is clean at
+	 * the time of the push, it won't have pushed the CIL at all, so in that
+	 * case we should try the push for this sequence again from the start
+	 * just in case.
+	 */
+
+	if (sequence == cil->xc_current_sequence &&
+	    !list_empty(&cil->xc_cil)) {
+		spin_unlock(&cil->xc_push_lock);
+		goto restart;
+	}
+
 	spin_unlock(&cil->xc_push_lock);
 	return commit_lsn;
 }