writeback: Fix occasional slow sync(1)

In case when system contains no dirty pages, wakeup_flusher_threads()
will submit WB_SYNC_NONE writeback for 0 pages so wb_writeback() exits
immediately without doing anything. Thus sync(1) will write all the
dirty inodes from a WB_SYNC_ALL writeback pass which is slow.

Fix the problem by using get_nr_dirty_pages() in
wakeup_flusher_threads() instead of calculating number of dirty pages
manually. That function also takes number of dirty inodes into account.

CC: stable@vger.kernel.org
Reported-by: Paul Taysom <taysom@chromium.org>
Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Cristoforo Cataldo <cristoforo.cataldo@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Francisco Franco <franciscofranco.1990@gmail.com>
writeback: fix writeback cache thrashing

Consider Process A: huge I/O on sda
        doing heavy write operation - dirty memory becomes more
        than dirty_background_ratio
        on HDD - flusher thread flush-8:0

Consider Process B: small I/O on sdb
        doing while [1]; read 1024K + rewrite 1024K + sleep 2sec
        on Flash device - flusher thread flush-8:16

As Process A is a heavy dirtier, dirty memory becomes more
than dirty_background_thresh. Due to this, below check becomes
true(checking global_page_state in over_bground_thresh)
for all bdi devices(even for very small dirtied bdi - sdb):

In this case, even small cached data on 'sdb' is forced to flush
and writeback cache thrashing happens.

When we added debug prints inside above 'if' condition and ran
above Process A(heavy dirtier on bdi with flush-8:0) and
Process B(1024K frequent read/rewrite on bdi with flush-8:16)
we got below prints:

[Test setup: ARM dual core CPU, 512 MB RAM]

[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  56064 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  56704 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE = 84720 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE = 94720 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   384 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   960 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =    64 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE = 92160 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   256 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   768 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =    64 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   256 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   320 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =     0 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE = 92032 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE = 91968 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   192 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  1024 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =    64 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   192 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   576 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =     0 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE = 84352 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   192 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =   512 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:16 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =     0 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE = 92608 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE = 92544 KB

As mentioned in above log, when global dirty memory > global background_thresh
small cached data is also forced to flush by flush-8:16.
If removing global background_thresh checking code, we can reduce cache
thrashing of frequently used small data.
And It will be great if we can reserve a portion of writeback cache using
min_ratio.

After applying patch:
$ echo 5 > /sys/block/sdb/bdi/min_ratio
$ cat /sys/block/sdb/bdi/min_ratio
5
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  56064 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  56704 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  84160 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  96960 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  94080 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  93120 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  93120 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  91520 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  89600 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  93696 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  93696 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  72960 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  90624 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  90624 KB
[over_bground_thresh]: wakeup flush-8:0 : BDI_RECLAIMABLE =  90688 KB

As mentioned in the above logs, once cache is reserved for Process B,
and patch is applied there is less writeback cache thrashing on sdb
by frequent forced writeback by flush-8:16 in over_bground_thresh.

After all, small cached data will be flushed by periodic writeback
once every dirty_writeback_interval.

Suggested-by: Wanpeng Li <liwanp@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Namjae Jeon <namjae.jeon@samsung.com>
Signed-off-by: Vivek Trivedi <t.vivek@samsung.com>
Signed-off-by: Francisco Franco <franciscofranco.1990@gmail.com>
writeback: fix race that cause writeback hung

There is a race between mark inode dirty and writeback thread, see the
following scenario.  In this case, writeback thread will not run though
there is dirty_io.

__mark_inode_dirty()                                          bdi_writeback_workfn()
	...                                                       	...
	spin_lock(&inode->i_lock);
	...
	if (bdi_cap_writeback_dirty(bdi)) {
	    <<< assume wb has dirty_io, so wakeup_bdi is false.
	    <<< the following inode_dirty also have wakeup_bdi false.
	    if (!wb_has_dirty_io(&bdi->wb))
		    wakeup_bdi = true;
	}
	spin_unlock(&inode->i_lock);
	                                                            <<< assume last dirty_io is removed here.
	                                                            pages_written = wb_do_writeback(wb);
	                                                            ...
	                                                            <<< work_list empty and wb has no dirty_io,
	                                                            <<< delayed_work will not be queued.
	                                                            if (!list_empty(&bdi->work_list) ||
	                                                                (wb_has_dirty_io(wb) && dirty_writeback_interval))
	                                                                queue_delayed_work(bdi_wq, &wb->dwork,
	                                                                    msecs_to_jiffies(dirty_writeback_interval * 10));
	spin_lock(&bdi->wb.list_lock);
	inode->dirtied_when = jiffies;
	<<< new dirty_io is added.
	list_move(&inode->i_wb_list, &bdi->wb.b_dirty);
	spin_unlock(&bdi->wb.list_lock);

	<<< though there is dirty_io, but wakeup_bdi is false,
	<<< so writeback thread will not be waked up and
	<<< the new dirty_io will not be flushed.
	if (wakeup_bdi)
	    bdi_wakeup_thread_delayed(bdi);

Writeback will run until there is a new flush work queued.  This may cause
a lot of dirty pages stay in memory for a long time.

Signed-off-by: Junxiao Bi <junxiao.bi@oracle.com>
Reviewed-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Cc: Fengguang Wu <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
arch: arm: remove tracer support