BFQ currently creates, and updates, its own instance of the whole
set of blkio statistics that cfq creates. Yet, from the comments
of Tejun Heo in [1], it turned out that most of these statistics
are meant/useful only for debugging. This commit makes BFQ create
the latter, debugging statistics only if the option
CONFIG_DEBUG_BLK_CGROUP is set.
By doing so, this commit also enables BFQ to enjoy a high perfomance
boost. The reason is that, if CONFIG_DEBUG_BLK_CGROUP is not set, then
BFQ has to update far fewer statistics, and, in particular, not the
heaviest to update. To give an idea of the benefits, if
CONFIG_DEBUG_BLK_CGROUP is not set, then, on an Intel i7-4850HQ, and
with 8 threads doing random I/O in parallel on null_blk (configured
with 0 latency), the throughput of BFQ grows from 310 to 400 KIOPS
(+30%). We have measured similar or even much higher boosts with other
CPUs: e.g., +45% with an ARM CortexTM-A53 Octa-core. Our results have
been obtained and can be reproduced very easily with the script in [1].
[1] https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-block/msg18943.html
Suggested-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Suggested-by: Ulf Hansson <ulf.hansson@linaro.org>
Tested-by: Lee Tibbert <lee.tibbert@gmail.com>
Tested-by: Oleksandr Natalenko <oleksandr@natalenko.name>
Signed-off-by: Luca Miccio <lucmiccio@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente <paolo.valente@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
In blk-cgroup, operations on blkg objects are protected with the
request_queue lock. This is no more the lock that protects
I/O-scheduler operations in blk-mq. In fact, the latter are now
protected with a finer-grained per-scheduler-instance lock. As a
consequence, although blkg lookups are also rcu-protected, blk-mq I/O
schedulers may see inconsistent data when they access blkg and
blkg-related objects. BFQ does access these objects, and does incur
this problem, in the following case.
The blkg_lookup performed in bfq_get_queue, being protected (only)
through rcu, may happen to return the address of a copy of the
original blkg. If this is the case, then the blkg_get performed in
bfq_get_queue, to pin down the blkg, is useless: it does not prevent
blk-cgroup code from destroying both the original blkg and all objects
directly or indirectly referred by the copy of the blkg. BFQ accesses
these objects, which typically causes a crash for NULL-pointer
dereference of memory-protection violation.
Some additional protection mechanism should be added to blk-cgroup to
address this issue. In the meantime, this commit provides a quick
temporary fix for BFQ: cache (when safe) blkg data that might
disappear right after a blkg_lookup.
In particular, this commit exploits the following facts to achieve its
goal without introducing further locks. Destroy operations on a blkg
invoke, as a first step, hooks of the scheduler associated with the
blkg. And these hooks are executed with bfqd->lock held for BFQ. As a
consequence, for any blkg associated with the request queue an
instance of BFQ is attached to, we are guaranteed that such a blkg is
not destroyed, and that all the pointers it contains are consistent,
while that instance is holding its bfqd->lock. A blkg_lookup performed
with bfqd->lock held then returns a fully consistent blkg, which
remains consistent until this lock is held. In more detail, this holds
even if the returned blkg is a copy of the original one.
Finally, also the object describing a group inside BFQ needs to be
protected from destruction on the blkg_free of the original blkg
(which invokes bfq_pd_free). This commit adds private refcounting for
this object, to let it disappear only after no bfq_queue refers to it
any longer.
This commit also removes or updates some stale comments on locking
issues related to blk-cgroup operations.
Reported-by: Tomas Konir <tomas.konir@gmail.com>
Reported-by: Lee Tibbert <lee.tibbert@gmail.com>
Reported-by: Marco Piazza <mpiazza@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente <paolo.valente@linaro.org>
Tested-by: Tomas Konir <tomas.konir@gmail.com>
Tested-by: Lee Tibbert <lee.tibbert@gmail.com>
Tested-by: Marco Piazza <mpiazza@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@fb.com>
The BFQ I/O scheduler features an optimal fair-queuing
(proportional-share) scheduling algorithm, enriched with several
mechanisms to boost throughput and reduce latency for interactive and
real-time applications. This makes BFQ a large and complex piece of
code. This commit addresses this issue by splitting BFQ into three
main, independent components, and by moving each component into a
separate source file:
1. Main algorithm: handles the interaction with the kernel, and
decides which requests to dispatch; it uses the following two further
components to achieve its goals.
2. Scheduling engine (Hierarchical B-WF2Q+ scheduling algorithm):
computes the schedule, using weights and budgets provided by the above
component.
3. cgroups support: handles group operations (creation, destruction,
move, ...).
Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente <paolo.valente@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@fb.com>
Luca Miccio
Bart Van Assche
Paolo Valente