writeback: make reasonable gap between the dirty/background thresholds

Andrew,
References: <[email protected]>
Content-Disposition: inline; filename=writeback-fix-oversize-background-thresh.patch

The change is virtually a no-op for the majority users that use the default 10/20 background/dirty ratios. For others don't know why they are setting background ratio close enough to dirty ratio. Someone must set background ratio equal to dirty ratio, but no one seems to notice or complain that it's then silently halved under the hood..

---
 mm/page-writeback.c |   11 +++++++++--
 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

@@ -403,8 +403,15 @@ void global_dirty_limits(unsigned long *
 	else
 		background = (dirty_background_ratio * available_memory) / 100;
 
-	if (background >= dirty)
-		background = dirty / 2;
+	/*
+	 * Ensure at least 1/4 gap between background and dirty thresholds, so
+	 * that when dirty throttling starts at (background + dirty)/2, it's at
+	 * the entrance of bdi soft throttle threshold, so as to avoid being
+	 * hard throttled.
+	 */
+	if (background > dirty - dirty * 2 / BDI_SOFT_DIRTY_LIMIT)
+		background = dirty - dirty * 2 / BDI_SOFT_DIRTY_LIMIT;
+
 	tsk = current;
 	if (tsk->flags & PF_LESS_THROTTLE || rt_task(tsk)) {
 		background += background / 4;

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