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    SubjectRe: [PATCH 1/2] MM: replace PF_LESS_THROTTLE with PF_LOCAL_THROTTLE
    On Thu 02-04-20 10:53:20, Neil Brown wrote:
    >
    > PF_LESS_THROTTLE exists for loop-back nfsd, and a similar need in the
    > loop block driver, where a daemon needs to write to one bdi in
    > order to free up writes queued to another bdi.
    >
    > The daemon sets PF_LESS_THROTTLE and gets a larger allowance of dirty
    > pages, so that it can still dirty pages after other processses have been
    > throttled.
    >
    > This approach was designed when all threads were blocked equally,
    > independently on which device they were writing to, or how fast it was.
    > Since that time the writeback algorithm has changed substantially with
    > different threads getting different allowances based on non-trivial
    > heuristics. This means the simple "add 25%" heuristic is no longer
    > reliable.
    >
    > This patch changes the heuristic to ignore the global limits and
    > consider only the limit relevant to the bdi being written to. This
    > approach is already available for BDI_CAP_STRICTLIMIT users (fuse) and
    > should not introduce surprises. This has the desired result of
    > protecting the task from the consequences of large amounts of dirty data
    > queued for other devices.

    While I understand that you want to have per bdi throttling for those
    "special" files I am still missing how this is going to provide the
    additional room that the additnal 25% gave them previously. I might
    misremember or things have changed (what you mention as non-trivial
    heuristics) but PF_LESS_THROTTLE really needed that room to guarantee a
    forward progress. Care to expan some more on how this is handled now?
    Maybe we do not need it anymore but calling that out explicitly would be
    really helpful.
    --
    Michal Hocko
    SUSE Labs

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