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btrfs: balance dirty metadata pages in btrfs_finish_ordered_io

PATCH Superseded Ethan Lien 2 participants 3 messages Apr 27, 2018 – May 23, 2018 Btrfs file system

v1 of 2 Superseded Latest is v2 →

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Ethan Lien

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PATCH 1/1 btrfs: balance dirty metadata pages in btrfs_finish_ordered_io

We should balance dirty metadata pages at the end of btrfs_finish_ordered_io, since a small, unmergeable random write can potentially produce dirty metadata which is multiple times larger than the data itself. For example, a small, unmergeable 4KiB write may produce:

16KiB dirty leaf (and possibly 16KiB dirty node) in subvolume tree 16KiB dirty leaf (and possibly 16KiB dirty node) in checksum tree 16KiB dirty leaf (and possibly 16KiB dirty node) in extent tree

Although we do call balance dirty pages in write side, but in the buffered write path, most metadata are dirtied only after we reach the dirty background limit (which by far onlys counts dirty data pages) and wakeup the flusher thread. If there are many small, unmergeable random writes spread in a large btree, we'll find a burst of dirty pages exceeds the dirty_bytes limit after we wakeup the flusher thread - which is not what we expect. In our machine, it caused out-of-memory problem since a page cannot be dropped if it is marked dirty.

Someone may worry about we may sleep in btrfs_btree_balance_dirty(), but since we do btrfs_finish_ordered_io in a separate worker, it will not stop the flusher consuming dirty pages. Also, we use different worker for metadata writeback endio, sleep in btrfs_finish_ordered_io help us throttle the size of dirty metadata pages.

---
 fs/btrfs/inode.c | 2 ++
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)
fs/btrfs/inode.c +2 -0
index d241285a0d2a..d09433ab126e 100644
@@ -3151,6 +3151,8 @@ static int btrfs_finish_ordered_io(struct btrfs_ordered_extent *ordered_extent)
 	/* once for the tree */
 	btrfs_put_ordered_extent(ordered_extent);
 
+	btrfs_btree_balance_dirty(fs_info);
+
 	return ret;
 }
 
Signature · 1 line
2.17.0
#1 lore raw
Quoted 19 lines · Ethan Lien

We should balance dirty metadata pages at the end of btrfs_finish_ordered_io, since a small, unmergeable random write can potentially produce dirty metadata which is multiple times larger than the data itself. For example, a small, unmergeable 4KiB write may produce:

16KiB dirty leaf (and possibly 16KiB dirty node) in subvolume tree 16KiB dirty leaf (and possibly 16KiB dirty node) in checksum tree 16KiB dirty leaf (and possibly 16KiB dirty node) in extent tree

Although we do call balance dirty pages in write side, but in the buffered write path, most metadata are dirtied only after we reach the dirty background limit (which by far onlys counts dirty data pages) and wakeup the flusher thread. If there are many small, unmergeable random writes spread in a large btree, we'll find a burst of dirty pages exceeds the dirty_bytes limit after we wakeup the flusher thread - which is not what we expect. In our machine, it caused out-of-memory problem since a page cannot be dropped if it is marked dirty.

Quoted 5 lines

Someone may worry about we may sleep in btrfs_btree_balance_dirty(), but since we do btrfs_finish_ordered_io in a separate worker, it will not stop the flusher consuming dirty pages. Also, we use different worker for metadata writeback endio, sleep in btrfs_finish_ordered_io help us throttle the size of dirty metadata pages.

The described scenario sounds interesting. Do you have some scripted steps to reproduce it?

btrfs_btree_balance_dirty detects congestion and can skip the balancing eventually, so the case when it actually does something and waits is the point where things can go bad. From the last paragraph, it is clear that you have considered that, that's good.

Have you also considered calling __btrfs_btree_balance_dirty with flush_delayed=0 ? This would avoid the waiting and I'm not sure if it's really required here to get out of the situation.

Anyway, I'll add the patch to for-next for more testing.

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#2 lore raw

David Sterba 於 2018-05-23 00:28 寫到:

Quoted 20 lines · Ethan Lien
Quoted 19 lines

We should balance dirty metadata pages at the end of btrfs_finish_ordered_io, since a small, unmergeable random write can potentially produce dirty metadata which is multiple times larger than the data itself. For example, a small, unmergeable 4KiB write may produce:

16KiB dirty leaf (and possibly 16KiB dirty node) in subvolume tree 16KiB dirty leaf (and possibly 16KiB dirty node) in checksum tree 16KiB dirty leaf (and possibly 16KiB dirty node) in extent tree

Although we do call balance dirty pages in write side, but in the buffered write path, most metadata are dirtied only after we reach the dirty background limit (which by far onlys counts dirty data pages) and wakeup the flusher thread. If there are many small, unmergeable random writes spread in a large btree, we'll find a burst of dirty pages exceeds the dirty_bytes limit after we wakeup the flusher thread - which is not what we expect. In our machine, it caused out-of-memory problem since a page cannot be dropped if it is marked dirty.

Quoted 8 lines
Quoted 5 lines

Someone may worry about we may sleep in btrfs_btree_balance_dirty(), but since we do btrfs_finish_ordered_io in a separate worker, it will not stop the flusher consuming dirty pages. Also, we use different worker for metadata writeback endio, sleep in btrfs_finish_ordered_io help us throttle the size of dirty metadata pages.

The described scenario sounds interesting. Do you have some scripted steps to reproduce it?

It needs some time to reproduce the problem. In our case,
1. Create 4 subvolumes.
2. Run fio on each subvolume:

[global]
direct=0
rw=randwrite
ioengine=libaio
bs=4k
iodepth=16
numjobs=1
group_reporting
size=128G
runtime=1800
norandommap
time_based
randrepeat=0

3. Take snapshot on each subvolume and repeat fio on existing files.
4. Repeat step 2&3 until we get really big btrees.
In our case, by observing btrfs_root_item->bytes_used, we have 2GiB of metadata in each subvolume tree and 12GiB of metadata in extent tree.
5. Stop all fio, take snapshot again, and wait until all delayed work is completed.
6. Start all fio. Few seconds later we hit OOM when the flusher starts to work.

It can be reproduced even when using nocow write.

Quoted 8 lines

btrfs_btree_balance_dirty detects congestion and can skip the balancing eventually, so the case when it actually does something and waits is the point where things can go bad. From the last paragraph, it is clear that you have considered that, that's good.

Have you also considered calling __btrfs_btree_balance_dirty with flush_delayed=0 ? This would avoid the waiting and I'm not sure if it's really required here to get out of the situation.

Yes, btrfs_btree_balance_dirty_nodelay seems to be a better choice, I'll add it to the v2 patch, thanks.

Quoted 5 lines

Anyway, I'll add the patch to for-next for more testing.
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