At meta network block devices (nbd) are used to implement remote block storage. In testing and during production it has been observed that these network block devices can consume a huge portion of the dirty writeback cache and writeback can take a considerable time.
To be able to give stricter limits, I'm proposing the following changes:
1) introduce strictlimit knob
Currently the max_ratio knob exists to limit the dirty_memory. However this knob only applies once (dirty_ratio + dirty_background_ratio) / 2 has been reached. With the BDI_CAP_STRICTLIMIT flag, the max_ratio can be applied without reaching that limit. This change exposes that knob.
This knob can also be useful for NFS, fuse filesystems and USB devices.
2) Use part of 1000000 internal calculation
The max_ratio is based on percentage. With the current machine sizes percentage values can be very high (1% of a 256GB main memory is already 2.5GB). This change uses part of 1000000 instead of percentages for the internal calculations.
3) Introduce two new sysfs knobs: min_bytes and max_bytes.
Currently all calculations are based on ratio, but for a user it often more convenient to specify a limit in bytes. The new knobs will not store bytes values, instead they will translate the byte value to a corresponding ratio. As the internal values are now part of 1000, the ratio is closer to the specified value. However the value should be more seen as an approximation as it can fluctuate over time.
3) Introduce two new sysfs knobs: min_ratio_fine and max_ratio_fine.
The granularity for the existing sysfs bdi knobs min_ratio and max_ratio is based on percentage values. The new sysfs bdi knobs min_ratio_fine and max_ratio_fine allow to specify the ratio as part of 1 million.
Chen Wandun (1): mm: rework calculation of bdi_min_ratio in bdi_set_min_ratio
Jingbo Xu (2): mm: fix arithmetic for max_prop_frac when setting max_ratio mm: fix arithmetic for bdi min_ratio
Stefan Roesch (20): mm: add bdi_set_strict_limit() function mm: add knob /sys/class/bdi/<bdi>/strict_limit mm: document /sys/class/bdi/<bdi>/strict_limit knob mm: use part per 1000000 for bdi ratios mm: add bdi_get_max_bytes() function mm: split off __bdi_set_max_ratio() function mm: add bdi_set_max_bytes() function mm: add knob /sys/class/bdi/<bdi>/max_bytes mm: document /sys/class/bdi/<bdi>/max_bytes knob mm: add bdi_get_min_bytes() function mm: split off __bdi_set_min_ratio() function mm: add bdi_set_min_bytes() function mm: add /sys/class/bdi/<bdi>/min_bytes knob mm: document /sys/class/bdi/<bdi>/min_bytes knob mm: add bdi_set_max_ratio_no_scale() function mm: add /sys/class/bdi/<bdi>/max_ratio_fine knob mm: document /sys/class/bdi/<bdi>/max_ratio_fine knob mm: add bdi_set_min_ratio_no_scale() function mm: add /sys/class/bdi/<bdi>/min_ratio_fine knob mm: document /sys/class/bdi/<bdi>/min_ratio_fine knob
Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-class-bdi | 68 ++++++++++ include/linux/backing-dev.h | 10 ++ mm/backing-dev.c | 133 +++++++++++++++++++- mm/page-writeback.c | 147 +++++++++++++++++++--- 4 files changed, 341 insertions(+), 17 deletions(-)