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Flag file systems as supporting parallel dio writes

PATCH In review Jens Axboe 7 participants 20 messages Mar 7, 2023 – Apr 19, 2023

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Jens Axboe

author maintainer
#0 lore raw

cover Flag file systems as supporting parallel dio writes

Hi,

This has been on my TODO list for a while, and now that ext4 supports parallel dio writes as well, time to dust it off and send it out... This adds an FMODE flag to inform users that a given file supports parallel dio writes. io_uring can use this to avoid serializing dio writes upfront, in case it isn't needed. A few details in patch #2, patch 1 does nothing by itself.

Signature · 1 line
Jens Axboe
author maintainer
#1 lore raw

PATCH 1/2 fs: add FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE flag

Some filesystems support multiple threads writing to the same file with O_DIRECT without requiring exclusive access to it. io_uring can use this hint to avoid serializing dio writes to this inode, instead allowing them to run in parallel.

XFS and ext4 both fall into this category, so set the flag for both of them.

---
 fs/ext4/file.c     | 3 ++-
 fs/xfs/xfs_file.c  | 3 ++-
 include/linux/fs.h | 3 +++
 3 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
fs/ext4/file.c +2 -1
index 0b8b4499e5ca..d101b3b0c7da 100644
@@ -899,7 +899,8 @@ static int ext4_file_open(struct inode *inode, struct file *filp)
 			return ret;
 	}
 
-	filp->f_mode |= FMODE_NOWAIT | FMODE_BUF_RASYNC;
+	filp->f_mode |= FMODE_NOWAIT | FMODE_BUF_RASYNC |
+			FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE;
 	return dquot_file_open(inode, filp);
 }
 
fs/xfs/xfs_file.c +2 -1
index 705250f9f90a..863289aaa441 100644
@@ -1171,7 +1171,8 @@ xfs_file_open(
 {
 	if (xfs_is_shutdown(XFS_M(inode->i_sb)))
 		return -EIO;
-	file->f_mode |= FMODE_NOWAIT | FMODE_BUF_RASYNC | FMODE_BUF_WASYNC;
+	file->f_mode |= FMODE_NOWAIT | FMODE_BUF_RASYNC | FMODE_BUF_WASYNC |
+			FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE;
 	return generic_file_open(inode, file);
 }
 
include/linux/fs.h +3 -0
index c85916e9f7db..475d88640d3d 100644
@@ -168,6 +168,9 @@ typedef int (dio_iodone_t)(struct kiocb *iocb, loff_t offset,
 
 #define	FMODE_NOREUSE		((__force fmode_t)0x800000)
 
+/* File supports non-exclusive O_DIRECT writes from multiple threads */
+#define FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE	((__force fmode_t)0x1000000)
+
 /* File was opened by fanotify and shouldn't generate fanotify events */
 #define FMODE_NONOTIFY		((__force fmode_t)0x4000000)
 
Signature · 1 line
2.39.2
#2 lore raw

PATCH 1/2 fs: add FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE flag

Miklos, Jens,

could we please also set this flag for fuse?

Thanks,
Bernd

fuse: Set FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE flag

From: Bernd Schubert <[email protected]>

Fuse can also do parallel DIO writes, if userspace has enabled it.

---
 fs/fuse/file.c |    3 +++
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)
fs/fuse/file.c +3 -0
index 875314ee6f59..46e7f1196fd1 100644
@@ -215,6 +215,9 @@ void fuse_finish_open(struct inode *inode, struct file *file)
 	}
 	if ((file->f_mode & FMODE_WRITE) && fc->writeback_cache)
 		fuse_link_write_file(file);
+
+	if (ff->open_flags & FOPEN_PARALLEL_DIRECT_WRITES)
+		file->f_mode |= FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE;
 }
 
 int fuse_open_common(struct inode *inode, struct file *file, bool isdir)
#3 lore raw

Re: [PATCH 1/2] fs: add FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE flag

Sorry, had forgotten to CC Miklos.

Quoted 34 lines · Bernd Schubert

Miklos, Jens,

could we please also set this flag for fuse?

Thanks,
Bernd

fuse: Set FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE flag

From: Bernd Schubert <[email protected]>

Fuse can also do parallel DIO writes, if userspace has enabled it.

---
  fs/fuse/file.c |    3 +++
  1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)
fs/fuse/file.c +3 -0
index 875314ee6f59..46e7f1196fd1 100644
@@ -215,6 +215,9 @@ void fuse_finish_open(struct inode *inode, struct file *file)
  	}
  	if ((file->f_mode & FMODE_WRITE) && fc->writeback_cache)
  		fuse_link_write_file(file);
+
+	if (ff->open_flags & FOPEN_PARALLEL_DIRECT_WRITES)
+		file->f_mode |= FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE;
  }
 
  int fuse_open_common(struct inode *inode, struct file *file, bool isdir)
maintainer
#4 lore raw

Re: [PATCH 1/2] fs: add FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE flag

In reply to Bernd Schubert
Quoted 26 lines · Bernd Schubert

Miklos, Jens,

could we please also set this flag for fuse?

Thanks,
Bernd

fuse: Set FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE flag

From: Bernd Schubert <[email protected]>

Fuse can also do parallel DIO writes, if userspace has enabled it.

---
 fs/fuse/file.c |    3 +++
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)
fs/fuse/file.c +0 -0
index 875314ee6f59..46e7f1196fd1 100644

fs/fuse/file.c void fuse_finish_open(struct inode *inode, struct file *file) · line 220

Quoted 6 lines
fs/fuse/file.c +3 -0
@@ -215,6 +215,9 @@ void fuse_finish_open(struct inode *inode, struct file *file)
        }
        if ((file->f_mode & FMODE_WRITE) && fc->writeback_cache)
                fuse_link_write_file(file);
+
+       if (ff->open_flags & FOPEN_PARALLEL_DIRECT_WRITES)
+               file->f_mode |= FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE;

fuse_direct_write_iter():

bool exclusive_lock =

    !(ff->open_flags & FOPEN_PARALLEL_DIRECT_WRITES) ||
    iocb->ki_flags & IOCB_APPEND ||
    fuse_direct_write_extending_i_size(iocb, from);

If the write is size extending, then it will take the lock exclusive. OTOH, I guess that it would be unusual for lots of size extending writes to be done in parallel.

What would be the effect of giving the FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE hint and then still serializing the writes?

Thanks,
Miklos

#5 lore raw

Re: [PATCH 1/2] fs: add FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE flag

Quoted 41 lines · Miklos Szeredi
Quoted 26 lines · Bernd Schubert

Miklos, Jens,

could we please also set this flag for fuse?

Thanks,
Bernd

fuse: Set FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE flag

From: Bernd Schubert <[email protected]>

Fuse can also do parallel DIO writes, if userspace has enabled it.

---
  fs/fuse/file.c |    3 +++
  1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)
fs/fuse/file.c +0 -0
index 875314ee6f59..46e7f1196fd1 100644

fs/fuse/file.c void fuse_finish_open(struct inode *inode, struct file *file) · line 220

Quoted 6 lines
fs/fuse/file.c +3 -0
@@ -215,6 +215,9 @@ void fuse_finish_open(struct inode *inode, struct file *file)
         }
         if ((file->f_mode & FMODE_WRITE) && fc->writeback_cache)
                 fuse_link_write_file(file);
+
+       if (ff->open_flags & FOPEN_PARALLEL_DIRECT_WRITES)
+               file->f_mode |= FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE;

fuse_direct_write_iter():

bool exclusive_lock =

     !(ff->open_flags & FOPEN_PARALLEL_DIRECT_WRITES) ||
     iocb->ki_flags & IOCB_APPEND ||
     fuse_direct_write_extending_i_size(iocb, from);
Quoted 6 lines

If the write is size extending, then it will take the lock exclusive. OTOH, I guess that it would be unusual for lots of size extending writes to be done in parallel.

What would be the effect of giving the FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE hint and then still serializing the writes?

It used here

https://lore.kernel.org/io-uring/20230403-wound-roundworm-c1660e059b8c@brauner/T/#m5f86985d6c67dd1d01a977475dab542c338372dd

fuse_finish_open has its own lock, so letting uring handle requests in parallel should not hurt? Is this going like

application -> uring does parallel requests -> fuse.ko -> fuse-deamon

So when fuse-deamon signals that it can handle parallel DIO, it is just fuse.ko that might need its own lock to extend the file?

Thanks,
Bernd

#6 lore raw

Re: [PATCH 1/2] fs: add FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE flag

In reply to Miklos Szeredi
Quoted 7 lines · Miklos Szeredi

fuse_direct_write_iter():

bool exclusive_lock =

    !(ff->open_flags & FOPEN_PARALLEL_DIRECT_WRITES) ||
    iocb->ki_flags & IOCB_APPEND ||
    fuse_direct_write_extending_i_size(iocb, from);
Quoted 6 lines

If the write is size extending, then it will take the lock exclusive. OTOH, I guess that it would be unusual for lots of size extending writes to be done in parallel.

What would be the effect of giving the FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE hint and then still serializing the writes?

I have no idea how this flags work, but XFS also takes i_rwsem exclusively for appends, when the positions and size aren't aligned to the block size, and a few other cases.

#7 lore raw

Re: [PATCH 1/2] fs: add FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE flag

Quoted 12 lines · Christoph Hellwig
Quoted 11 lines · Miklos Szeredi

fuse_direct_write_iter():

bool exclusive_lock =

    !(ff->open_flags & FOPEN_PARALLEL_DIRECT_WRITES) ||
    iocb->ki_flags & IOCB_APPEND ||
    fuse_direct_write_extending_i_size(iocb, from);

If the write is size extending, then it will take the lock exclusive. OTOH, I guess that it would be unusual for lots of size extending writes to be done in parallel.

Quoted 6 lines
Quoted 2 lines

What would be the effect of giving the FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE hint and then still serializing the writes?

I have no idea how this flags work, but XFS also takes i_rwsem exclusively for appends, when the positions and size aren't aligned to the block size, and a few other cases.

IIUC uring wants to avoid the situation where someone sends 300 writes to the same file, all of which end up in background workers, and all of which then contend on exclusive i_rwsem. Hence it has some hashing scheme that executes io requests serially if they hash to the same value (which iirc is the inode number?) to prevent resource waste.

This flag turns off that hashing behavior on the assumption that each of those 300 writes won't serialize on the other 299 writes, hence it's ok to start up 300 workers.

(apologies for precoffee garbled response)

--D

author maintainer
#8 lore raw

Re: [PATCH 1/2] fs: add FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE flag

Quoted 26 lines · Darrick J. Wong
Quoted 12 lines · Christoph Hellwig
Quoted 11 lines · Miklos Szeredi

fuse_direct_write_iter():

bool exclusive_lock =

    !(ff->open_flags & FOPEN_PARALLEL_DIRECT_WRITES) ||
    iocb->ki_flags & IOCB_APPEND ||
    fuse_direct_write_extending_i_size(iocb, from);

If the write is size extending, then it will take the lock exclusive. OTOH, I guess that it would be unusual for lots of size extending writes to be done in parallel.

Quoted 6 lines
Quoted 2 lines

What would be the effect of giving the FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE hint and then still serializing the writes?

I have no idea how this flags work, but XFS also takes i_rwsem exclusively for appends, when the positions and size aren't aligned to the block size, and a few other cases.

IIUC uring wants to avoid the situation where someone sends 300 writes to the same file, all of which end up in background workers, and all of which then contend on exclusive i_rwsem. Hence it has some hashing scheme that executes io requests serially if they hash to the same value (which iirc is the inode number?) to prevent resource waste.

Quoted 5 lines

This flag turns off that hashing behavior on the assumption that each of those 300 writes won't serialize on the other 299 writes, hence it's ok to start up 300 workers.

(apologies for precoffee garbled response)

Yep, that is pretty much it. If all writes to that inode are serialized by a lock on the fs side, then we'll get a lot of contention on that mutex. And since, originally, nothing supported async writes, everything would get punted to the io-wq workers. io_uring added per-inode hashing for this, so that any punt to io-wq of a write would get serialized.

IOW, it's an efficiency thing, not a correctness thing.

Signature · 1 line
Jens Axboe
maintainer
#9 lore raw

Re: [PATCH 1/2] fs: add FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE flag

Quoted 7 lines · Jens Axboe

Yep, that is pretty much it. If all writes to that inode are serialized by a lock on the fs side, then we'll get a lot of contention on that mutex. And since, originally, nothing supported async writes, everything would get punted to the io-wq workers. io_uring added per-inode hashing for this, so that any punt to io-wq of a write would get serialized.

IOW, it's an efficiency thing, not a correctness thing.

We could still get a performance regression if the majority of writes still trigger the exclusive locking. The questions are:

- how often does that happen in real life?
- how bad the performance regression would be?

Without first attempting to answer those questions, I'd be reluctant to add FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE to fuse.

Thanks,
Miklos

#10 lore raw

Re: [PATCH 1/2] fs: add FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE flag

Quoted 8 lines · Miklos Szeredi
Quoted 6 lines · Jens Axboe

Yep, that is pretty much it. If all writes to that inode are serialized by a lock on the fs side, then we'll get a lot of contention on that mutex. And since, originally, nothing supported async writes, everything would get punted to the io-wq workers. io_uring added per-inode hashing for this, so that any punt to io-wq of a write would get serialized.

Quoted 6 lines
Quoted 1 line

IOW, it's an efficiency thing, not a correctness thing.

We could still get a performance regression if the majority of writes still trigger the exclusive locking. The questions are:

- how often does that happen in real life?

Application depending? My personal opinion is that applications/developers knowing about uring would also know that they should set the right file size first. Like MPIIO is extending files persistently and it is hard to fix with all these different MPI stacks (I can try to notify mpich and mvapich developers). So best would be to document it somewhere in the uring man page that parallel extending files might have negative side effects?

Quoted 1 line

- how bad the performance regression would be?

I can give it a try with fio and fallocate=none over fuse during the next days.

Quoted 4 lines

Without first attempting to answer those questions, I'd be reluctant to add FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE to fuse.

Bernd

#11 lore raw

Re: [PATCH 1/2] fs: add FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE flag

Quoted 16 lines · Bernd Schubert
Quoted 8 lines · Miklos Szeredi
Quoted 6 lines · Jens Axboe

Yep, that is pretty much it. If all writes to that inode are serialized by a lock on the fs side, then we'll get a lot of contention on that mutex. And since, originally, nothing supported async writes, everything would get punted to the io-wq workers. io_uring added per-inode hashing for this, so that any punt to io-wq of a write would get serialized.

Quoted 6 lines
Quoted 1 line

IOW, it's an efficiency thing, not a correctness thing.

We could still get a performance regression if the majority of writes still trigger the exclusive locking. The questions are:

- how often does that happen in real life?

Quoted 7 lines

Application depending? My personal opinion is that applications/developers knowing about uring would also know that they should set the right file size first. Like MPIIO is extending files persistently and it is hard to fix with all these different MPI stacks (I can try to notify mpich and mvapich developers). So best would be to document it somewhere in the uring man page that parallel extending files might have negative side effects?

There are relatively few applications running concurrent async RWF_APPEND DIO writes. IIRC SycallaDB was the first we came across a few years ago. Apps that use RWF_APPEND for individual DIOs expect that it doesn't cause performance anomolies.

These days XFS will run concurrent append DIO writes and it doesn't serialise RWF_APPEND IO against other RWF_APPEND IOs. Avoiding data corruption due to racing append IOs doing file extension has been delegated to the userspace application similar to how we delegate the responsibility for avoiding data corruption due to overlapping concurrent DIO to userspace.

Quoted 4 lines
Quoted 1 line

- how bad the performance regression would be?

I can give it a try with fio and fallocate=none over fuse during the next days.

It depends on where the lock that triggers serialisation is, and how bad the contention on it is. rwsems suck for write contention because of the "spin on owner" "optimisations" for write locking and long write holds that occur in the IO path. In general, it will be no worse than using userspace threads to issue the exact same IO pattern using concurrent sync IO.

Quoted 2 lines
Quoted 2 lines

Without first attempting to answer those questions, I'd be reluctant to add FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE to fuse.

I'd tag it with this anyway - for the majority of apps that are doing concurrent DIO within EOF, shared locking is big win. If there's a corner case that apps trigger that is slow, deal with them when they are reported....

Cheers,

Dave.

Signature · 2 lines
Dave Chinner
[email protected]
author maintainer
#12 lore raw

Re: [PATCH 1/2] fs: add FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE flag

Quoted 7 lines · Dave Chinner
Quoted 2 lines
Quoted 2 lines

Without first attempting to answer those questions, I'd be reluctant to add FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE to fuse.

I'd tag it with this anyway - for the majority of apps that are doing concurrent DIO within EOF, shared locking is big win. If there's a corner case that apps trigger that is slow, deal with them when they are reported....

Agree, the common/fast case will be fine, which is really the most important part.

Signature · 1 line
Jens Axboe
#13 lore raw

Re: [PATCH 1/2] fs: add FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE flag

In reply to Darrick J. Wong
Quoted 11 lines · Darrick J. Wong

IIUC uring wants to avoid the situation where someone sends 300 writes to the same file, all of which end up in background workers, and all of which then contend on exclusive i_rwsem. Hence it has some hashing scheme that executes io requests serially if they hash to the same value (which iirc is the inode number?) to prevent resource waste.

This flag turns off that hashing behavior on the assumption that each of those 300 writes won't serialize on the other 299 writes, hence it's ok to start up 300 workers.

(apologies for precoffee garbled response)

It might be useful if someone (Jens?) could clearly document the assumptions for this flag.

author maintainer
#14 lore raw

Re: [PATCH 1/2] fs: add FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE flag

Quoted 7 lines · Christoph Hellwig
Quoted 6 lines · Darrick J. Wong

IIUC uring wants to avoid the situation where someone sends 300 writes to the same file, all of which end up in background workers, and all of which then contend on exclusive i_rwsem. Hence it has some hashing scheme that executes io requests serially if they hash to the same value (which iirc is the inode number?) to prevent resource waste.

Quoted 8 lines
Quoted 5 lines

This flag turns off that hashing behavior on the assumption that each of those 300 writes won't serialize on the other 299 writes, hence it's ok to start up 300 workers.

(apologies for precoffee garbled response)

It might be useful if someone (Jens?) could clearly document the assumptions for this flag.

I guess it can be summed up as the common case should not be using exclusive (per file/inode) locking. If file extensions need exclusive locking that's less of a concern, as I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that to require stricter locking.

Signature · 1 line
Jens Axboe
author maintainer
#15 lore raw

PATCH 2/2 io_uring: avoid hashing O_DIRECT writes if the filesystem doesn't need it

In reply to Jens Axboe

io_uring hashes writes to a given file/inode so that it can serialize them. This is useful if the file system needs exclusive access to the file to perform the write, as otherwise we end up with a ton of io-wq threads trying to lock the inode at the same time. This can cause excessive system time.

But if the file system has flagged that it supports parallel O_DIRECT writes, then there's no need to serialize the writes. Check for that through FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE and don't hash it if we don't need to.

In a basic test of 8 threads writing to a file on XFS on a gen2 Optane, with each thread writing in 4k chunks, it improves performance from ~1350K IOPS (or ~5290MiB/sec) to ~1410K IOPS (or ~5500MiB/sec).

---
 io_uring/io_uring.c | 8 +++++++-
 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
io_uring/io_uring.c +7 -1
index fd9ba840c4a2..93cc1ff5e9cd 100644
@@ -429,7 +429,13 @@ static void io_prep_async_work(struct io_kiocb *req)
 	}
 
 	if (req->flags & REQ_F_ISREG) {
-		if (def->hash_reg_file || (ctx->flags & IORING_SETUP_IOPOLL))
+		bool should_hash = def->hash_reg_file;
+
+		/* don't serialize this request if the fs doesn't need it */
+		if (should_hash && (req->file->f_flags & O_DIRECT) &&
+		    (req->file->f_mode & FMODE_DIO_PARALLEL_WRITE))
+			should_hash = false;
+		if (should_hash || (ctx->flags & IORING_SETUP_IOPOLL))
 			io_wq_hash_work(&req->work, file_inode(req->file));
 	} else if (!req->file || !S_ISBLK(file_inode(req->file)->i_mode)) {
 		if (def->unbound_nonreg_file)
Signature · 1 line
2.39.2
author maintainer
#16 lore raw
In reply to Jens Axboe
Quoted 8 lines · Jens Axboe

Hi,

This has been on my TODO list for a while, and now that ext4 supports parallel dio writes as well, time to dust it off and send it out... This adds an FMODE flag to inform users that a given file supports parallel dio writes. io_uring can use this to avoid serializing dio writes upfront, in case it isn't needed. A few details in patch #2, patch 1 does nothing by itself.

I'm assuming silence is consent here and folks are fine with this change?

Signature · 1 line
Jens Axboe
Reviewed-by
#17 lore raw
Quoted 10 lines · Jens Axboe
Quoted 8 lines · Jens Axboe

Hi,

This has been on my TODO list for a while, and now that ext4 supports parallel dio writes as well, time to dust it off and send it out... This adds an FMODE flag to inform users that a given file supports parallel dio writes. io_uring can use this to avoid serializing dio writes upfront, in case it isn't needed. A few details in patch #2, patch 1 does nothing by itself.

Quoted 2 lines

I'm assuming silence is consent here and folks are fine with this change?

Oh, yeah, this one fell off my radar.

LGTM,

--D

Quoted 4 lines
Signature · 1 line
Jens Axboe
author maintainer
#18 lore raw
Quoted 11 lines · Darrick J. Wong
Quoted 10 lines · Jens Axboe
Quoted 8 lines · Jens Axboe

Hi,

This has been on my TODO list for a while, and now that ext4 supports parallel dio writes as well, time to dust it off and send it out... This adds an FMODE flag to inform users that a given file supports parallel dio writes. io_uring can use this to avoid serializing dio writes upfront, in case it isn't needed. A few details in patch #2, patch 1 does nothing by itself.

Quoted 7 lines
Quoted 2 lines

I'm assuming silence is consent here and folks are fine with this change?

Oh, yeah, this one fell off my radar.

LGTM,

Thanks Darrick.

Signature · 1 line
Jens Axboe
maintainer Reviewed-by on the v1 series
#19 lore raw
In reply to Jens Axboe
Quoted 8 lines · Jens Axboe

Hi,

This has been on my TODO list for a while, and now that ext4 supports parallel dio writes as well, time to dust it off and send it out... This adds an FMODE flag to inform users that a given file supports parallel dio writes. io_uring can use this to avoid serializing dio writes upfront, in case it isn't needed. A few details in patch #2, patch 1 does nothing by itself.

Looks good,