Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 21 Apr 2010 09:29:04 +1000 | From | Dave Chinner <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 0/4] writeback: tracing and wbc->nr_to_write fixes |
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On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 01:02:16PM +0100, Richard Kennedy wrote: > On 20/04/10 03:41, Dave Chinner wrote: > > This series contains the initial writeback tracing patches from > > Jens, as well as the extensions I added to provide visibility into > > writeback control structures as the are used by the writeback code. > > The visibility given is sufficient to understand what is happening > > in the writeback path - what path is writing data, what path is > > blocking on congestion, etc, and to determine the differences in > > behaviour for different sync modes and calling contexts. This > > tracing really needs to be integrated into mainline so that anyone > > can improve the tracing as they use it to track down problems > > in our convoluted writeback paths. > > > > The remaining patches are fixes to problems that the new tracing > > highlighted. > > Hi Dave, > > Thanks for adding tracing to this, it will be really useful. > > The fix to write_cache_pages looks really interesting, I'm going to test > it on my machine. Maybe it should be a separate patch to get more > visibility?
I don't see a big need to separate the series at this point. Once there's been a review and testing we can decide how to push them into mainline. IMO, the tracing is just as important as the bug fixes....
> Ext4 also multiplies nr_to_write, so will that need fixing too?
No idea. I don't claim to understand ext4's convoluted delayed allocation path and all it's constraints, so I guess you'd need to ask the ext4 developers about that one. After all, with the tracing they'd be able to see if there is a problem. ;)
Cheers,
Dave. -- Dave Chinner david@fromorbit.com
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