31 Aug, 2017

1 commit

  • To provide a very smooth service, bfq starts to serve a bfq_queue
    only if the queue is 'eligible', i.e., if the same queue would
    have started to be served in the ideal, perfectly fair system that
    bfq simulates internally. This is obtained by associating each
    queue with a virtual start time, and by computing a special system
    virtual time quantity: a queue is eligible only if the system
    virtual time has reached the virtual start time of the
    queue. Finally, bfq guarantees that, when a new queue must be set
    in service, there is always at least one eligible entity for each
    active parent entity in the scheduler. To provide this guarantee,
    the function __bfq_lookup_next_entity pushes up, for each parent
    entity on which it is invoked, the system virtual time to the
    minimum among the virtual start times of the entities in the
    active tree for the parent entity (more precisely, the push up
    occurs if the system virtual time happens to be lower than all
    such virtual start times).

    There is however a circumstance in which __bfq_lookup_next_entity
    cannot push up the system virtual time for a parent entity, even
    if the system virtual time is lower than the virtual start times
    of all the child entities in the active tree. It happens if one of
    the child entities is in service. In fact, in such a case, there
    is already an eligible entity, the in-service one, even if it may
    not be not present in the active tree (because in-service entities
    may be removed from the active tree).

    Unfortunately, in the last re-design of the
    hierarchical-scheduling engine, the reset of the pointer to the
    in-service entity for a given parent entity--reset to be done as a
    consequence of the expiration of the in-service entity--always
    happens after the function __bfq_lookup_next_entity has been
    invoked. This causes the function to think that there is still an
    entity in service for the parent entity, and then that the system
    virtual time cannot be pushed up, even if actually such a
    no-more-in-service entity has already been properly reinserted
    into the active tree (or in some other tree if no more
    active). Yet, the system virtual time *had* to be pushed up, to be
    ready to correctly choose the next queue to serve. Because of the
    lack of this push up, bfq may wrongly set in service a queue that
    had been speculatively pre-computed as the possible
    next-in-service queue, but that would no more be the one to serve
    after the expiration and the reinsertion into the active trees of
    the previously in-service entities.

    This commit addresses this issue by making
    __bfq_lookup_next_entity properly push up the system virtual time
    if an expiration is occurring.

    Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente
    Tested-by: Lee Tibbert
    Tested-by: Oleksandr Natalenko
    Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

    Paolo Valente
     

29 Aug, 2017

1 commit


11 Aug, 2017

1 commit

  • The logic that decides whether to idle the device is scattered across
    three functions. Almost all of the logic is in the function
    bfq_bfqq_may_idle, but (1) part of the decision is made in
    bfq_update_idle_window, and (2) the function bfq_bfqq_must_idle may
    switch off idling regardless of the output of bfq_bfqq_may_idle. In
    addition, both bfq_update_idle_window and bfq_bfqq_must_idle make
    their decisions as a function of parameters that are used, for similar
    purposes, also in bfq_bfqq_may_idle. This commit addresses these
    issues by moving all the logic into bfq_bfqq_may_idle.

    Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente
    Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

    Paolo Valente
     

30 Jul, 2017

1 commit

  • Groups of BFQ queues are represented by generic entities in BFQ. When
    a queue belonging to a parent entity is deactivated, the parent entity
    may need to be deactivated too, in case the deactivated queue was the
    only active queue for the parent entity. This deactivation may need to
    be propagated upwards if the entity belongs, in its turn, to a further
    higher-level entity, and so on. In particular, the upward propagation
    of deactivation stops at the first parent entity that remains active
    even if one of its child entities has been deactivated.

    To decide whether the last non-deactivation condition holds for a
    parent entity, BFQ checks whether the field next_in_service is still
    not NULL for the parent entity, after the deactivation of one of its
    child entity. If it is not NULL, then there are certainly other active
    entities in the parent entity, and deactivations can stop.

    Unfortunately, this check misses a corner case: if in_service_entity
    is not NULL, then next_in_service may happen to be NULL, although the
    parent entity is evidently active. This happens if: 1) the entity
    pointed by in_service_entity is the only active entity in the parent
    entity, and 2) according to the definition of next_in_service, the
    in_service_entity cannot be considered as next_in_service. See the
    comments on the definition of next_in_service for details on this
    second point.

    Hitting the above corner case causes crashes.

    To address this issue, this commit:
    1) Extends the above check on only next_in_service to controlling both
    next_in_service and in_service_entity (if any of them is not NULL,
    then no further deactivation is performed)
    2) Improves the (important) comments on how next_in_service is defined
    and updated; in particular it fixes a few rather obscure paragraphs

    Reported-by: Eric Wheeler
    Reported-by: Rick Yiu
    Reported-by: Tom X Nguyen
    Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente
    Tested-by: Eric Wheeler
    Tested-by: Rick Yiu
    Tested-by: Laurentiu Nicola
    Tested-by: Tom X Nguyen
    Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

    Paolo Valente
     

29 Jul, 2017

1 commit

  • Currently cfq/bfq/blk-throttle output cgroup info in trace in their own
    way. Now we have standard blktrace API for this, so convert them to use
    it.

    Note, this changes the behavior a little bit. cgroup info isn't output
    by default, we only do this with 'blk_cgroup' option enabled. cgroup
    info isn't output as a string by default too, we only do this with
    'blk_cgname' option enabled. Also cgroup info is output in different
    position of the note string. I think these behavior changes aren't a big
    issue (actually we make trace data shorter which is good), since the
    blktrace note is solely for debugging.

    Signed-off-by: Shaohua Li
    Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

    Shaohua Li
     

12 Jul, 2017

1 commit


04 Jul, 2017

1 commit

  • On each deactivation or re-scheduling (after being served) of a
    bfq_queue, BFQ invokes the function __bfq_entity_update_weight_prio(),
    to perform pending updates of ioprio, weight and ioprio class for the
    bfq_queue. BFQ also invokes this function on I/O-request dispatches,
    to raise or lower weights more quickly when needed, thereby improving
    latency. However, the entity representing the bfq_queue may be on the
    active (sub)tree of a service tree when this happens, and, although
    with a very low probability, the bfq_queue may happen to also have a
    pending change of its ioprio class. If both conditions hold when
    __bfq_entity_update_weight_prio() is invoked, then the entity moves to
    a sort of hybrid state: the new service tree for the entity, as
    returned by bfq_entity_service_tree(), differs from service tree on
    which the entity still is. The functions that handle activations and
    deactivations of entities do not cope with such a hybrid state (and
    would need to become more complex to cope).

    This commit addresses this issue by just making
    __bfq_entity_update_weight_prio() not perform also a possible pending
    change of ioprio class, when invoked on an I/O-request dispatch for a
    bfq_queue. Such a change is thus postponed to when
    __bfq_entity_update_weight_prio() is invoked on deactivation or
    re-scheduling of the bfq_queue.

    Reported-by: Marco Piazza
    Reported-by: Laurentiu Nicola
    Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente
    Tested-by: Marco Piazza
    Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

    Paolo Valente
     

08 Jun, 2017

1 commit

  • In blk-cgroup, operations on blkg objects are protected with the
    request_queue lock. This is no more the lock that protects
    I/O-scheduler operations in blk-mq. In fact, the latter are now
    protected with a finer-grained per-scheduler-instance lock. As a
    consequence, although blkg lookups are also rcu-protected, blk-mq I/O
    schedulers may see inconsistent data when they access blkg and
    blkg-related objects. BFQ does access these objects, and does incur
    this problem, in the following case.

    The blkg_lookup performed in bfq_get_queue, being protected (only)
    through rcu, may happen to return the address of a copy of the
    original blkg. If this is the case, then the blkg_get performed in
    bfq_get_queue, to pin down the blkg, is useless: it does not prevent
    blk-cgroup code from destroying both the original blkg and all objects
    directly or indirectly referred by the copy of the blkg. BFQ accesses
    these objects, which typically causes a crash for NULL-pointer
    dereference of memory-protection violation.

    Some additional protection mechanism should be added to blk-cgroup to
    address this issue. In the meantime, this commit provides a quick
    temporary fix for BFQ: cache (when safe) blkg data that might
    disappear right after a blkg_lookup.

    In particular, this commit exploits the following facts to achieve its
    goal without introducing further locks. Destroy operations on a blkg
    invoke, as a first step, hooks of the scheduler associated with the
    blkg. And these hooks are executed with bfqd->lock held for BFQ. As a
    consequence, for any blkg associated with the request queue an
    instance of BFQ is attached to, we are guaranteed that such a blkg is
    not destroyed, and that all the pointers it contains are consistent,
    while that instance is holding its bfqd->lock. A blkg_lookup performed
    with bfqd->lock held then returns a fully consistent blkg, which
    remains consistent until this lock is held. In more detail, this holds
    even if the returned blkg is a copy of the original one.

    Finally, also the object describing a group inside BFQ needs to be
    protected from destruction on the blkg_free of the original blkg
    (which invokes bfq_pd_free). This commit adds private refcounting for
    this object, to let it disappear only after no bfq_queue refers to it
    any longer.

    This commit also removes or updates some stale comments on locking
    issues related to blk-cgroup operations.

    Reported-by: Tomas Konir
    Reported-by: Lee Tibbert
    Reported-by: Marco Piazza
    Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente
    Tested-by: Tomas Konir
    Tested-by: Lee Tibbert
    Tested-by: Marco Piazza
    Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

    Paolo Valente
     

20 Apr, 2017

1 commit

  • If we don't have CGROUPS enabled, the compile ends in the
    following misery:

    In file included from ../block/bfq-iosched.c:105:0:
    ../block/bfq-iosched.h:819:22: error: array type has incomplete element type
    extern struct cftype bfq_blkcg_legacy_files[];
    ^
    ../block/bfq-iosched.h:820:22: error: array type has incomplete element type
    extern struct cftype bfq_blkg_files[];
    ^

    Move the declarations under the right ifdef.

    Reported-by: Randy Dunlap
    Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

    Jens Axboe
     

19 Apr, 2017

1 commit

  • The BFQ I/O scheduler features an optimal fair-queuing
    (proportional-share) scheduling algorithm, enriched with several
    mechanisms to boost throughput and reduce latency for interactive and
    real-time applications. This makes BFQ a large and complex piece of
    code. This commit addresses this issue by splitting BFQ into three
    main, independent components, and by moving each component into a
    separate source file:
    1. Main algorithm: handles the interaction with the kernel, and
    decides which requests to dispatch; it uses the following two further
    components to achieve its goals.
    2. Scheduling engine (Hierarchical B-WF2Q+ scheduling algorithm):
    computes the schedule, using weights and budgets provided by the above
    component.
    3. cgroups support: handles group operations (creation, destruction,
    move, ...).

    Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente
    Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

    Paolo Valente