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6 commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
David Howells
201a15428b FS-Cache: Handle pages pending storage that get evicted under OOM conditions
Handle netfs pages that the vmscan algorithm wants to evict from the pagecache
under OOM conditions, but that are waiting for write to the cache.  Under these
conditions, vmscan calls the releasepage() function of the netfs, asking if a
page can be discarded.

The problem is typified by the following trace of a stuck process:

	kslowd005     D 0000000000000000     0  4253      2 0x00000080
	 ffff88001b14f370 0000000000000046 ffff880020d0d000 0000000000000007
	 0000000000000006 0000000000000001 ffff88001b14ffd8 ffff880020d0d2a8
	 000000000000ddf0 00000000000118c0 00000000000118c0 ffff880020d0d2a8
	Call Trace:
	 [<ffffffffa00782d8>] __fscache_wait_on_page_write+0x8b/0xa7 [fscache]
	 [<ffffffff8104c0f1>] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x34
	 [<ffffffffa0078240>] ? __fscache_check_page_write+0x63/0x70 [fscache]
	 [<ffffffffa00b671d>] nfs_fscache_release_page+0x4e/0xc4 [nfs]
	 [<ffffffffa00927f0>] nfs_release_page+0x3c/0x41 [nfs]
	 [<ffffffff810885d3>] try_to_release_page+0x32/0x3b
	 [<ffffffff81093203>] shrink_page_list+0x316/0x4ac
	 [<ffffffff8109372b>] shrink_inactive_list+0x392/0x67c
	 [<ffffffff813532fa>] ? __mutex_unlock_slowpath+0x100/0x10b
	 [<ffffffff81058df0>] ? trace_hardirqs_on_caller+0x10c/0x130
	 [<ffffffff8135330e>] ? mutex_unlock+0x9/0xb
	 [<ffffffff81093aa2>] shrink_list+0x8d/0x8f
	 [<ffffffff81093d1c>] shrink_zone+0x278/0x33c
	 [<ffffffff81052d6c>] ? ktime_get_ts+0xad/0xba
	 [<ffffffff81094b13>] try_to_free_pages+0x22e/0x392
	 [<ffffffff81091e24>] ? isolate_pages_global+0x0/0x212
	 [<ffffffff8108e743>] __alloc_pages_nodemask+0x3dc/0x5cf
	 [<ffffffff81089529>] grab_cache_page_write_begin+0x65/0xaa
	 [<ffffffff8110f8c0>] ext3_write_begin+0x78/0x1eb
	 [<ffffffff81089ec5>] generic_file_buffered_write+0x109/0x28c
	 [<ffffffff8103cb69>] ? current_fs_time+0x22/0x29
	 [<ffffffff8108a509>] __generic_file_aio_write+0x350/0x385
	 [<ffffffff8108a588>] ? generic_file_aio_write+0x4a/0xae
	 [<ffffffff8108a59e>] generic_file_aio_write+0x60/0xae
	 [<ffffffff810b2e82>] do_sync_write+0xe3/0x120
	 [<ffffffff8104c0f1>] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x34
	 [<ffffffff810b18e1>] ? __dentry_open+0x1a5/0x2b8
	 [<ffffffff810b1a76>] ? dentry_open+0x82/0x89
	 [<ffffffffa00e693c>] cachefiles_write_page+0x298/0x335 [cachefiles]
	 [<ffffffffa0077147>] fscache_write_op+0x178/0x2c2 [fscache]
	 [<ffffffffa0075656>] fscache_op_execute+0x7a/0xd1 [fscache]
	 [<ffffffff81082093>] slow_work_execute+0x18f/0x2d1
	 [<ffffffff8108239a>] slow_work_thread+0x1c5/0x308
	 [<ffffffff8104c0f1>] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x34
	 [<ffffffff810821d5>] ? slow_work_thread+0x0/0x308
	 [<ffffffff8104be91>] kthread+0x7a/0x82
	 [<ffffffff8100beda>] child_rip+0xa/0x20
	 [<ffffffff8100b87c>] ? restore_args+0x0/0x30
	 [<ffffffff8102ef83>] ? tg_shares_up+0x171/0x227
	 [<ffffffff8104be17>] ? kthread+0x0/0x82
	 [<ffffffff8100bed0>] ? child_rip+0x0/0x20

In the above backtrace, the following is happening:

 (1) A page storage operation is being executed by a slow-work thread
     (fscache_write_op()).

 (2) FS-Cache farms the operation out to the cache to perform
     (cachefiles_write_page()).

 (3) CacheFiles is then calling Ext3 to perform the actual write, using Ext3's
     standard write (do_sync_write()) under KERNEL_DS directly from the netfs
     page.

 (4) However, for Ext3 to perform the write, it must allocate some memory, in
     particular, it must allocate at least one page cache page into which it
     can copy the data from the netfs page.

 (5) Under OOM conditions, the memory allocator can't immediately come up with
     a page, so it uses vmscan to find something to discard
     (try_to_free_pages()).

 (6) vmscan finds a clean netfs page it might be able to discard (possibly the
     one it's trying to write out).

 (7) The netfs is called to throw the page away (nfs_release_page()) - but it's
     called with __GFP_WAIT, so the netfs decides to wait for the store to
     complete (__fscache_wait_on_page_write()).

 (8) This blocks a slow-work processing thread - possibly against itself.

The system ends up stuck because it can't write out any netfs pages to the
cache without allocating more memory.

To avoid this, we make FS-Cache cancel some writes that aren't in the middle of
actually being performed.  This means that some data won't make it into the
cache this time.  To support this, a new FS-Cache function is added
fscache_maybe_release_page() that replaces what the netfs releasepage()
functions used to do with respect to the cache.

The decisions fscache_maybe_release_page() makes are counted and displayed
through /proc/fs/fscache/stats on a line labelled "VmScan".  There are four
counters provided: "nos=N" - pages that weren't pending storage; "gon=N" -
pages that were pending storage when we first looked, but weren't by the time
we got the object lock; "bsy=N" - pages that we ignored as they were actively
being written when we looked; and "can=N" - pages that we cancelled the storage
of.

What I'd really like to do is alter the behaviour of the cancellation
heuristics, depending on how necessary it is to expel pages.  If there are
plenty of other pages that aren't waiting to be written to the cache that
could be ejected first, then it would be nice to hold up on immediate
cancellation of cache writes - but I don't see a way of doing that.

Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
2009-11-19 18:11:35 +00:00
David Howells
b510882281 FS-Cache: Implement data I/O part of netfs API
Implement the data I/O part of the FS-Cache netfs API.  The documentation and
API header file were added in a previous patch.

This patch implements the following functions for the netfs to call:

 (*) fscache_attr_changed().

     Indicate that the object has changed its attributes.  The only attribute
     currently recorded is the file size.  Only pages within the set file size
     will be stored in the cache.

     This operation is submitted for asynchronous processing, and will return
     immediately.  It will return -ENOMEM if an out of memory error is
     encountered, -ENOBUFS if the object is not actually cached, or 0 if the
     operation is successfully queued.

 (*) fscache_read_or_alloc_page().
 (*) fscache_read_or_alloc_pages().

     Request data be fetched from the disk, and allocate internal metadata to
     track the netfs pages and reserve disk space for unknown pages.

     These operations perform semi-asynchronous data reads.  Upon returning
     they will indicate which pages they think can be retrieved from disk, and
     will have set in progress attempts to retrieve those pages.

     These will return, in order of preference, -ENOMEM on memory allocation
     error, -ERESTARTSYS if a signal interrupted proceedings, -ENODATA if one
     or more requested pages are not yet cached, -ENOBUFS if the object is not
     actually cached or if there isn't space for future pages to be cached on
     this object, or 0 if successful.

     In the case of the multipage function, the pages for which reads are set
     in progress will be removed from the list and the page count decreased
     appropriately.

     If any read operations should fail, the completion function will be given
     an error, and will also be passed contextual information to allow the
     netfs to fall back to querying the server for the absent pages.

     For each successful read, the page completion function will also be
     called.

     Any pages subsequently tracked by the cache will have PG_fscache set upon
     them on return.  fscache_uncache_page() must be called for such pages.

     If supplied by the netfs, the mark_pages_cached() cookie op will be
     invoked for any pages now tracked.

 (*) fscache_alloc_page().

     Allocate internal metadata to track a netfs page and reserve disk space.

     This will return -ENOMEM on memory allocation error, -ERESTARTSYS on
     signal, -ENOBUFS if the object isn't cached, or there isn't enough space
     in the cache, or 0 if successful.

     Any pages subsequently tracked by the cache will have PG_fscache set upon
     them on return.  fscache_uncache_page() must be called for such pages.

     If supplied by the netfs, the mark_pages_cached() cookie op will be
     invoked for any pages now tracked.

 (*) fscache_write_page().

     Request data be stored to disk.  This may only be called on pages that
     have been read or alloc'd by the above three functions and have not yet
     been uncached.

     This will return -ENOMEM on memory allocation error, -ERESTARTSYS on
     signal, -ENOBUFS if the object isn't cached, or there isn't immediately
     enough space in the cache, or 0 if successful.

     On a successful return, this operation will have queued the page for
     asynchronous writing to the cache.  The page will be returned with
     PG_fscache_write set until the write completes one way or another.  The
     caller will not be notified if the write fails due to an I/O error.  If
     that happens, the object will become available and all pending writes will
     be aborted.

     Note that the cache may batch up page writes, and so it may take a while
     to get around to writing them out.

     The caller must assume that until PG_fscache_write is cleared the page is
     use by the cache.  Any changes made to the page may be reflected on disk.
     The page may even be under DMA.

 (*) fscache_uncache_page().

     Indicate that the cache should stop tracking a page previously read or
     alloc'd from the cache.  If the page was alloc'd only, but unwritten, it
     will not appear on disk.

Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Steve Dickson <steved@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Trond Myklebust <Trond.Myklebust@netapp.com>
Acked-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Tested-by: Daire Byrne <Daire.Byrne@framestore.com>
2009-04-03 16:42:39 +01:00
David Howells
ccc4fc3d11 FS-Cache: Implement the cookie management part of the netfs API
Implement the cookie management part of the FS-Cache netfs client API.  The
documentation and API header file were added in a previous patch.

This patch implements the following three functions:

 (1) fscache_acquire_cookie().

     Acquire a cookie to represent an object to the netfs.  If the object in
     question is a non-index object, then that object and its parent indices
     will be created on disk at this point if they don't already exist.  Index
     creation is deferred because an index may reside in multiple caches.

 (2) fscache_relinquish_cookie().

     Retire or release a cookie previously acquired.  At this point, the
     object on disk may be destroyed.

 (3) fscache_update_cookie().

     Update the in-cache representation of a cookie.  This is used to update
     the auxiliary data for coherency management purposes.

With this patch it is possible to have a netfs instruct a cache backend to
look up, validate and create metadata on disk and to destroy it again.
The ability to actually store and retrieve data in the objects so created is
added in later patches.

Note that these functions will never return an error.  _All_ errors are
handled internally to FS-Cache.

The worst that can happen is that fscache_acquire_cookie() may return a NULL
pointer - which is considered a negative cookie pointer and can be passed back
to any function that takes a cookie without harm.  A negative cookie pointer
merely suppresses caching at that level.

The stub in linux/fscache.h will detect inline the negative cookie pointer and
abort the operation as fast as possible.  This means that the compiler doesn't
have to set up for a call in that case.

See the documentation in Documentation/filesystems/caching/netfs-api.txt for
more information.

Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Steve Dickson <steved@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Trond Myklebust <Trond.Myklebust@netapp.com>
Acked-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Tested-by: Daire Byrne <Daire.Byrne@framestore.com>
2009-04-03 16:42:38 +01:00
David Howells
726dd7ff10 FS-Cache: Add netfs registration
Add functions to register and unregister a network filesystem or other client
of the FS-Cache service.  This allocates and releases the cookie representing
the top-level index for a netfs, and makes it available to the netfs.

If the FS-Cache facility is disabled, then the calls are optimised away at
compile time.

Note that whilst this patch may appear to work with FS-Cache enabled and a
netfs attempting to use it, it will leak the cookie it allocates for the netfs
as fscache_relinquish_cookie() is implemented in a later patch.  This will
cause the slab code to emit a warning when the module is removed.

Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Steve Dickson <steved@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Trond Myklebust <Trond.Myklebust@netapp.com>
Acked-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Tested-by: Daire Byrne <Daire.Byrne@framestore.com>
2009-04-03 16:42:38 +01:00
David Howells
0e04d4cefc FS-Cache: Add cache tag handling
Implement two features of FS-Cache:

 (1) The ability to request and release cache tags - names by which a cache may
     be known to a netfs, and thus selected for use.

 (2) An internal function by which a cache is selected by consulting the netfs,
     if the netfs wishes to be consulted.

Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Steve Dickson <steved@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Trond Myklebust <Trond.Myklebust@netapp.com>
Acked-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Tested-by: Daire Byrne <Daire.Byrne@framestore.com>
2009-04-03 16:42:37 +01:00
David Howells
2d6fff6370 FS-Cache: Add the FS-Cache netfs API and documentation
Add the API for a generic facility (FS-Cache) by which filesystems (such as AFS
or NFS) may call on local caching capabilities without having to know anything
about how the cache works, or even if there is a cache:

	+---------+
	|         |                        +--------------+
	|   NFS   |--+                     |              |
	|         |  |                 +-->|   CacheFS    |
	+---------+  |   +----------+  |   |  /dev/hda5   |
	             |   |          |  |   +--------------+
	+---------+  +-->|          |  |
	|         |      |          |--+
	|   AFS   |----->| FS-Cache |
	|         |      |          |--+
	+---------+  +-->|          |  |
	             |   |          |  |   +--------------+
	+---------+  |   +----------+  |   |              |
	|         |  |                 +-->|  CacheFiles  |
	|  ISOFS  |--+                     |  /var/cache  |
	|         |                        +--------------+
	+---------+

General documentation and documentation of the netfs specific API are provided
in addition to the header files.

As this patch stands, it is possible to build a filesystem against the facility
and attempt to use it.  All that will happen is that all requests will be
immediately denied as if no cache is present.

Further patches will implement the core of the facility.  The facility will
transfer requests from networking filesystems to appropriate caches if
possible, or else gracefully deny them.

If this facility is disabled in the kernel configuration, then all its
operations will trivially reduce to nothing during compilation.

WHY NOT I_MAPPING?
==================

I have added my own API to implement caching rather than using i_mapping to do
this for a number of reasons.  These have been discussed a lot on the LKML and
CacheFS mailing lists, but to summarise the basics:

 (1) Most filesystems don't do hole reportage.  Holes in files are treated as
     blocks of zeros and can't be distinguished otherwise, making it difficult
     to distinguish blocks that have been read from the network and cached from
     those that haven't.

 (2) The backing inode must be fully populated before being exposed to
     userspace through the main inode because the VM/VFS goes directly to the
     backing inode and does not interrogate the front inode's VM ops.

     Therefore:

     (a) The backing inode must fit entirely within the cache.

     (b) All backed files currently open must fit entirely within the cache at
     	 the same time.

     (c) A working set of files in total larger than the cache may not be
     	 cached.

     (d) A file may not grow larger than the available space in the cache.

     (e) A file that's open and cached, and remotely grows larger than the
     	 cache is potentially stuffed.

 (3) Writes go to the backing filesystem, and can only be transferred to the
     network when the file is closed.

 (4) There's no record of what changes have been made, so the whole file must
     be written back.

 (5) The pages belong to the backing filesystem, and all metadata associated
     with that page are relevant only to the backing filesystem, and not
     anything stacked atop it.

OVERVIEW
========

FS-Cache provides (or will provide) the following facilities:

 (1) Caches can be added / removed at any time, even whilst in use.

 (2) Adds a facility by which tags can be used to refer to caches, even if
     they're not available yet.

 (3) More than one cache can be used at once.  Caches can be selected
     explicitly by use of tags.

 (4) The netfs is provided with an interface that allows either party to
     withdraw caching facilities from a file (required for (1)).

 (5) A netfs may annotate cache objects that belongs to it.  This permits the
     storage of coherency maintenance data.

 (6) Cache objects will be pinnable and space reservations will be possible.

 (7) The interface to the netfs returns as few errors as possible, preferring
     rather to let the netfs remain oblivious.

 (8) Cookies are used to represent indices, files and other objects to the
     netfs.  The simplest cookie is just a NULL pointer - indicating nothing
     cached there.

 (9) The netfs is allowed to propose - dynamically - any index hierarchy it
     desires, though it must be aware that the index search function is
     recursive, stack space is limited, and indices can only be children of
     indices.

(10) Indices can be used to group files together to reduce key size and to make
     group invalidation easier.  The use of indices may make lookup quicker,
     but that's cache dependent.

(11) Data I/O is effectively done directly to and from the netfs's pages.  The
     netfs indicates that page A is at index B of the data-file represented by
     cookie C, and that it should be read or written.  The cache backend may or
     may not start I/O on that page, but if it does, a netfs callback will be
     invoked to indicate completion.  The I/O may be either synchronous or
     asynchronous.

(12) Cookies can be "retired" upon release.  At this point FS-Cache will mark
     them as obsolete and the index hierarchy rooted at that point will get
     recycled.

(13) The netfs provides a "match" function for index searches.  In addition to
     saying whether a match was made or not, this can also specify that an
     entry should be updated or deleted.

FS-Cache maintains a virtual index tree in which all indices, files, objects
and pages are kept.  Bits of this tree may actually reside in one or more
caches.

                                           FSDEF
                                             |
                        +------------------------------------+
                        |                                    |
                       NFS                                  AFS
                        |                                    |
           +--------------------------+                +-----------+
           |                          |                |           |
        homedir                     mirror          afs.org   redhat.com
           |                          |                            |
     +------------+           +---------------+              +----------+
     |            |           |               |              |          |
   00001        00002       00007           00125        vol00001   vol00002
     |            |           |               |                         |
 +---+---+     +-----+      +---+      +------+------+            +-----+----+
 |   |   |     |     |      |   |      |      |      |            |     |    |
PG0 PG1 PG2   PG0  XATTR   PG0 PG1   DIRENT DIRENT DIRENT        R/W   R/O  Bak
                     |                                            |
                    PG0                                       +-------+
                                                              |       |
                                                            00001   00003
                                                              |
                                                          +---+---+
                                                          |   |   |
                                                         PG0 PG1 PG2

In the example above, two netfs's can be seen to be backed: NFS and AFS.  These
have different index hierarchies:

 (*) The NFS primary index will probably contain per-server indices.  Each
     server index is indexed by NFS file handles to get data file objects.
     Each data file objects can have an array of pages, but may also have
     further child objects, such as extended attributes and directory entries.
     Extended attribute objects themselves have page-array contents.

 (*) The AFS primary index contains per-cell indices.  Each cell index contains
     per-logical-volume indices.  Each of volume index contains up to three
     indices for the read-write, read-only and backup mirrors of those volumes.
     Each of these contains vnode data file objects, each of which contains an
     array of pages.

The very top index is the FS-Cache master index in which individual netfs's
have entries.

Any index object may reside in more than one cache, provided it only has index
children.  Any index with non-index object children will be assumed to only
reside in one cache.

The FS-Cache overview can be found in:

	Documentation/filesystems/caching/fscache.txt

The netfs API to FS-Cache can be found in:

	Documentation/filesystems/caching/netfs-api.txt

Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Steve Dickson <steved@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Trond Myklebust <Trond.Myklebust@netapp.com>
Acked-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Tested-by: Daire Byrne <Daire.Byrne@framestore.com>
2009-04-03 16:42:36 +01:00