writeback: move wb_over_bg_thresh() call outside lock section

Patch series "cgroup: eliminate atomic rstat flushing", v5.

A previous patch series [1] changed most atomic rstat flushing contexts to
become non-atomic.  This was done to avoid an expensive operation that
scales with # cgroups and # cpus to happen with irqs disabled and
scheduling not permitted.  There were two remaining atomic flushing
contexts after that series.  This series tries to eliminate them as well,
eliminating atomic rstat flushing completely.

The two remaining atomic flushing contexts are:
(a) wb_over_bg_thresh()->mem_cgroup_wb_stats()
(b) mem_cgroup_threshold()->mem_cgroup_usage()

For (a), flushing needs to be atomic as wb_writeback() calls
wb_over_bg_thresh() with a spinlock held.  However, it seems like the call
to wb_over_bg_thresh() doesn't need to be protected by that spinlock, so
this series proposes a refactoring that moves the call outside the lock
criticial section and makes the stats flushing in mem_cgroup_wb_stats()
non-atomic.

For (b), flushing needs to be atomic as mem_cgroup_threshold() is called
with irqs disabled.  We only flush the stats when calculating the root
usage, as it is approximated as the sum of some memcg stats (file, anon,
and optionally swap) instead of the conventional page counter.  This
series proposes changing this calculation to use the global stats instead,
eliminating the need for a memcg stat flush.

After these 2 contexts are eliminated, we no longer need
mem_cgroup_flush_stats_atomic() or cgroup_rstat_flush_atomic().  We can
remove them and simplify the code.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20230330191801.1967435-1-yosryahmed@google.com/


This patch (of 5):

wb_over_bg_thresh() calls mem_cgroup_wb_stats() which invokes an rstat
flush, which can be expensive on large systems. Currently,
wb_writeback() calls wb_over_bg_thresh() within a lock section, so we
have to do the rstat flush atomically. On systems with a lot of
cpus and/or cgroups, this can cause us to disable irqs for a long time,
potentially causing problems.

Move the call to wb_over_bg_thresh() outside the lock section in
preparation to make the rstat flush in mem_cgroup_wb_stats() non-atomic.
The list_empty(&wb->work_list) check should be okay outside the lock
section of wb->list_lock as it is protected by a separate lock
(wb->work_lock), and wb_over_bg_thresh() doesn't seem like it is
modifying any of wb->b_* lists the wb->list_lock is protecting.
Also, the loop seems to be already releasing and reacquring the
lock, so this refactoring looks safe.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230421174020.2994750-1-yosryahmed@google.com
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230421174020.2994750-2-yosryahmed@google.com
Signed-off-by: Yosry Ahmed <yosryahmed@google.com>
Reviewed-by: Michal Koutný <mkoutny@suse.com>
Reviewed-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Acked-by: Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@google.com>
Acked-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Cc: Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>
Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
Cc: Muchun Song <songmuchun@bytedance.com>
Cc: Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@linux.dev>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 11 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/fs/fs-writeback.c b/fs/fs-writeback.c
index ae4e51e91ee3..aca4b4811394 100644
--- a/fs/fs-writeback.c
+++ b/fs/fs-writeback.c
@@ -2024,7 +2024,6 @@ static long wb_writeback(struct bdi_writeback *wb,
 	struct blk_plug plug;
 
 	blk_start_plug(&plug);
-	spin_lock(&wb->list_lock);
 	for (;;) {
 		/*
 		 * Stop writeback when nr_pages has been consumed
@@ -2049,6 +2048,9 @@ static long wb_writeback(struct bdi_writeback *wb,
 		if (work->for_background && !wb_over_bg_thresh(wb))
 			break;
 
+
+		spin_lock(&wb->list_lock);
+
 		/*
 		 * Kupdate and background works are special and we want to
 		 * include all inodes that need writing. Livelock avoidance is
@@ -2078,13 +2080,19 @@ static long wb_writeback(struct bdi_writeback *wb,
 		 * mean the overall work is done. So we keep looping as long
 		 * as made some progress on cleaning pages or inodes.
 		 */
-		if (progress)
+		if (progress) {
+			spin_unlock(&wb->list_lock);
 			continue;
+		}
+
 		/*
 		 * No more inodes for IO, bail
 		 */
-		if (list_empty(&wb->b_more_io))
+		if (list_empty(&wb->b_more_io)) {
+			spin_unlock(&wb->list_lock);
 			break;
+		}
+
 		/*
 		 * Nothing written. Wait for some inode to
 		 * become available for writeback. Otherwise
@@ -2096,9 +2104,7 @@ static long wb_writeback(struct bdi_writeback *wb,
 		spin_unlock(&wb->list_lock);
 		/* This function drops i_lock... */
 		inode_sleep_on_writeback(inode);
-		spin_lock(&wb->list_lock);
 	}
-	spin_unlock(&wb->list_lock);
 	blk_finish_plug(&plug);
 
 	return nr_pages - work->nr_pages;